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Brown Onion Sauces, or Onion Gravy

A savory sauce made from onions, butter, flour, broth, wine, and mushroom ketchup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Brown Onion Sauces, or Onion Gravy

Ingredients

Directions

Make the gravy

  1. In a quart saucepan, melt the butter over low heat.

  2. Add the sliced onions and cook, stirring, until lightly browned.

  3. Gradually stir in the flour, then add the broth, pepper, and salt.

  4. Bring to a boil and cook for a few minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Stir in the claret and mushroom ketchup, and add lemon juice or vinegar if desired.

  2. Strain the sauce through a fine sieve.

  3. For a variation, add curry powder to make curry sauce.

  4. If using for steaks, add fried onions or whole boiled button onions 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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  3. Onion + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

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

  4. Port wine + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together570 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Onions
Browning slowly builds sweetness and savory depth that forms the gravy's base.
Butter
Provides fat for cooking the onions and adds rich flavor to the gravy.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the broth into a smooth gravy as it cooks.
Broth
Supplies the liquid that becomes the body of the gravy.
Claret or port wine
Adds acidity and fruity depth that balances the rich onions and broth.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds concentrated savory, umami flavor to the gravy.

The step that matters

Browning the onions. Cooking the onions until lightly browned develops sweetness and color through caramelization. Pale onions leave the gravy tasting flat, while over-browning can make it bitter.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, pepper, port wine, mushroom, ketchup, lemon):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, pepper, port wine, mushroom, ketchup, lemon. 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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