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Another Brown Onion Sauce

A savory sauce made from stewed onions, veal gravy, and cream.

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

Prepare the onions

  1. Skin, slice, and mince the onions.

Make the sauce

  1. Stew them in butter over low heat until reduced to a pulp.

  2. Pour in the veal gravy and season with salt and cayenne if needed.

  3. Skim off the fat and press the sauce through a sieve.

  4. Heat the sauce in a clean saucepan and mix in the boiling cream.

Serve

  1. Serve immediately.

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

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

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

  5. Butter + vealtop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,381 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

Mild onions
Break down into a pulp that forms the body and sweetness of the sauce.
Butter
Cooks the onions gently and adds richness and a silky mouthfeel.
Veal gravy
Adds savory depth and liquid to thin the onion pulp into a sauce.
Boiling cream
Adds fat and smoothness, rounding out the sauce just before serving.

The step that matters

Stewing the onions over low heat. Onions cooked slowly over low heat soften and release their sugars for gentle browning and sweetness. High heat can scorch them, leaving bitter flavors and an uneven pulp.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, veal, 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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