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Another Brown Onion Sauce

A savory sauce made from browned onions, butter, flour, gravy, and cream, seasoned with salt and cayenne pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Another Brown Onion Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Mince the onions and stew them in butter until well colored.

  2. Stir in 2 teaspoons of flour and cook for 3 to 4 minutes.

  3. Pour in enough broth or gravy to keep the sauce thick.

  4. Season with salt and cayenne, then 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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Onion + vealtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,841 recipes

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

  5. Onion + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,827 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

Onion and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,827 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

Onions
Provide the bulk of the sauce and, when browned, its sweet, deep flavor.
Butter
Browns the onions and carries flavor, giving the sauce richness.
Flour (in the method)
Thickens the sauce as it cooks with the butter and onions.
Veal gravy
Adds savory body and liquid that keeps the sauce thick and smooth.

The step that matters

Stew the onions until well colored. Slow cooking in butter browns the onion sugars and proteins, building the sweet, deep flavor the sauce depends on. Pale onions taste flat and raw.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, veal, pepper, cream):

  1. Potatofits about as well
  2. Onionthe original
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Leekfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, veal, pepper, cream. 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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