Skip to main content
Main

Spanish Sauce

A savory sauce made by simmering beef, veal, ham, and aromatics in stock, then thickening with brown sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Spanish Sauce

Why it works: Thyme and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Spanish Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. In a stewpan, melt the butter, then add the beef, veal, and ham.

  2. Pour enough stock to cover the bottom of the stewpan.

  3. Boil until thick, then simmer until brightly colored, avoiding burning.

Simmer and strain

  1. Add thyme, parsley, bay leaf, carrot, onion, cloves, mace, peppercorns, shallots, and stock or water.

  2. Simmer for 1 hour, then strain and cool.

Finish the sauce

  1. Remove fat from the top, reheat, and thicken with brown thickening until creamy.

  2. Remove fat as it rises and add ⅓ cup of madeira or sherry if desired.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Thyme + clovetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Thyme + carrottop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds richness and carries flavor as the meat and ham brown in the pan.
Beef or veal
Provides meaty flavor and body to the stock as it simmers.
Lean ham
Adds salty, savory depth to the stock.
Shallots
Add a mild, sweet aromatic flavor to the sauce.
Brown thickening (in the method)
Thickens the sauce to a creamy texture.

The step that matters

Boil until thick, then simmer until brightly colored, avoiding burning. Reducing the meat and stock until they darken builds color and flavor through browning. If the bottom scorches, bitter burnt notes will carry into the whole sauce, so the pan must be watched and stirred.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, beef, ham, thyme, parsley, carrot, onion):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Celeryfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, beef, ham, thyme, parsley, carrot, onion. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

You might also like

Roast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCarrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesCorned BeefCorned Beef87 recipes