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Another Brown Onion Sauce

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

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

Make the onion base

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

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

Finish the sauce

  1. Pour in enough veal gravy to make the sauce thick, then season with salt and cayenne.

  2. Skim off any fat, press the sauce through a sieve, and heat it in a clean saucepan.

  3. Mix in the boiling cream and 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

White onions
Provide the sweet, deeply browned base that gives the sauce its flavor and color.
Butter
Carries the onions as they cook slowly, adding richness and helping them brown.
Flour (in the method)
Thickens the sauce as it cooks with the butter and onion juices.
Veal gravy
Supplies the liquid and savory body that turns the onions into a sauce.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Stew the onions until well colored. Onions need slow, low heat so their sugars caramelize and brown rather than scorch. This browning builds the sauce's main flavor and color, so pale or burnt onions will taste flat or bitter.

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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