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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) · 9 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

Prepare the gravy

  1. In a quart stew-pan, 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 and season with 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. Rub the sauce through a fine sieve 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
Caramelised slowly in butter, they give the gravy its sweet, savoury base flavour and body.
Butter
Carries the onions' browning and adds richness and a rounded mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the broth into a smooth gravy as it cooks.
Broth
Forms the liquid base of the gravy and supplies savoury depth.
Claret or port wine
Adds acidity and fruity depth that lifts the savoury flavours.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds concentrated savoury umami that deepens the gravy's flavour.

The step that matters

Stirring in the flour. Flour added to hot fat must be stirred in gradually so it coats evenly and dissolves into the liquid. Adding it all at once or before the liquid is ready can leave lumps and a floury taste.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Red currantfits about as well
  3. Limefits about as well
  4. Plumfits about as well

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