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Espagnole Sauce

A classic French brown sauce made with butter, flour, and broth, simmered and strained.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Espagnole Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Let the broth cool to remove the fat from the surface.

Make the roux

  1. Melt the butter in a stewpan over low heat.

  2. Gradually stir in the flour until thoroughly mixed.

  3. Continue stirring the roux until it turns a brownish color.

Make the sauce

  1. Off the heat, gradually moisten the roux with the broth.

  2. Return to heat and stir continuously until boiling.

  3. Reduce heat and simmer for 10 minutes.

  4. Pass the sauce through a fine sieve into a bowl.

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

Butter
Adds fat and richness, and carries flavor through the roux.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when cooked with fat and liquid, forming a roux.
Broth
Forms the liquid base that the roux thickens into a sauce.

The step that matters

Moistening the roux off the heat. Adding broth gradually while the roux is off the heat prevents lumps, because the starch disperses evenly before the mixture thickens as it returns to heat.

“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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