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Brown Onion Sauce

A sauce made from sautéed onions, Espagnole sauce, and haricot bean puree, seasoned to taste.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and beans match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,242 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Brown Onion Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. Soak the haricot beans for 12 hours.

  2. Boil the beans in salted water until tender.

  3. Mash the beans through a fine sieve.

Make the sauce

  1. Skin and chop the onions, then fry them in the butter until golden.

  2. Add the Espagnole sauce to the onions and simmer until the onions are tender.

  3. Pass the mixture through a fine sieve.

  4. Stir in the haricot puree and warm thoroughly.

  5. Season to taste and serve.

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. Onion + beanstop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,242 recipes

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

  2. Sauce + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Sauce + beanstop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,184 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Beans + buttertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,799 recipes

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

Sauce and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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

Spanish onions
Provide the main body and sweet, deep flavour as they cook down until golden and tender.
Espagnole sauce
Forms the savoury base of the sauce and carries its rich, brown flavour.
Haricot beans
Puréed to thicken the sauce and give it body and a smooth texture.
Butter
Fat for frying the onions, adding richness and helping them brown.

The step that matters

Frying the onions until golden. Onions need slow, even browning in butter so their natural sugars caramelise without burning. Scorched onions add bitterness that carries through the whole sauce.

Swap the beans

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, sauce, butter):

  1. Sesamefits better
  2. Beansthe original
  3. Cashew nutfits about as well
  4. Peanutfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, sauce, butter. 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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