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Sauce

Brown Sauce

A savory sauce made with butter, carrot, onion, peppercorns, clove, celery seeds, herbs, flour, stock, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Brown Sauce

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

Brown Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the roux

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan over medium heat.

  2. Add the sliced carrot, onion, peppercorns, and clove; fry until light brown.

  3. Stir in the flour and let it brown slightly.

Simmer and finish

  1. Tie the herbs and celery seeds in a piece of muslin and add to the pan along with the stock.

  2. Stir until boiling, then reduce heat and simmer gently for about 30 minutes.

  3. Strain the sauce through a fine strainer or tammy cloth.

  4. Season with coarse sea salt before using.

  5. If the sauce is too thick, add more stock or water.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together8,053 recipes

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

  3. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together6,810 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Clove + thymetop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together4,108 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
Carries the aromatics and, with the flour, forms the roux that thickens the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it cooks with the butter, and browning it adds colour and nutty flavour.
Stock
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, which the roux thickens and the simmering concentrates.
Onion
Frying until light brown builds savoury, sweet depth in the sauce's base.
Carrot
Frying softens it and adds natural sweetness and body to the sauce.

The step that matters

Browning the flour. Cooking the flour in butter long enough to brown slightly builds flavour and colour, but too little leaves a raw floury taste and too much gives a bitter, burnt note. Stir constantly so it cooks evenly.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, carrot, clove, celery, thyme, parsley, flour):

  1. Parsnipbetter flavor fit
  2. Leekbetter flavor fit
  3. Turnipbetter flavor fit
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, carrot, clove, celery, thyme, parsley, flour. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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