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Sauce Madere

A sauce made with veal scraps, ham, vegetables, butter, flour, stock, Madeira wine, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Sauce Madere

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. In a saucepan, combine veal scraps and ham with chopped carrot, parsley, onion, and eschalots.

  2. Toss the mixture in butter over medium heat until browned.

  3. Sprinkle flour over the browned ingredients while stirring.

Finish the sauce

  1. Add stock to achieve desired sauce consistency and let it simmer until thickened.

  2. Stir in Madeira wine and lemon juice, then simmer briefly before serving.

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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  2. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Parsley + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Veal scraps
Provide meaty flavor and gelatin that gives the finished sauce body.
Flour
Thickens the sauce by swelling in the butter and stock as it simmers.
Stock
Forms the liquid base of the sauce and carries its savory flavor.
Madeira wine
Adds sweetness and depth through its fortified, caramelized character.
Butter
Carries flavor from the aromatics and helps the vegetables brown.

The step that matters

Browning the veal, ham and vegetables in butter. Browning builds deep flavor through the Maillard reaction. Pale vegetables and meat produce a flat, washed-out sauce that no later step can fully correct.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, ham, carrot, parsley, butter, flour, madeira wine):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Turnipfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, ham, carrot, parsley, butter, flour, madeira wine. 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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