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Sauce

Fumet of Game Sauce No. 2

A sauce made from hare or rabbit bones, partridge or pigeon carcass, onions, thyme, Chablis, broth, and brown sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and thyme are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,171 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Fumet of Game Sauce No. 2

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Combine the bones of a hare or rabbit, the carcass of partridge or pigeon, sliced onions, thyme, and Chablis in a stewpan.

  2. Simmer the mixture briefly, ensuring the meat does not stick to the bottom.

  3. Add broth in proportion to the meat and let it stew for 30 minutes.

  4. Strain the mixture through a fine sieve (tamis).

  5. If there is enough meat, pound it and add it to the sauce before straining.

  6. If there is not enough meat, stir in 2-3 tablespoons of brown sauce.

Serve

  1. Keep the sauce warm in a bain-marie and serve with cutlets or tendrons.

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.

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. Onion + thymetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Rabbit + meattop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together315 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Rabbit + thymetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together210 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  4. Rabbit + oniontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,292 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Thyme + meattop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,008 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

Bones and carcass
Provide the meaty flavour that gives the sauce its base character.
Chablis
Adds acidity and wine aroma that brighten the rich meat flavour.
Broth
Provides liquid and body, extracting flavour from the meat as it stews.
Brown sauce
Thickens the sauce and deepens its colour and savoury flavour when meat is scarce.

The step that matters

Simmer briefly without letting the meat stick. Meat that sticks and scorches to the bottom of the stewpan can taste burnt and bitter, spoiling the whole sauce. Gentle, brief simmering with attention to the base keeps the flavour clean before the longer stew.

Swap the thyme

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rabbit, onion, meat, sauce):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Thymethe original
  4. Celeryfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, onion, meat, sauce. 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.

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