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Espagnole Sauce

A rich brown sauce made with veal, ham, carrots, onions, parsley, stock, tomato sauce, sherry, and brown roux.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Espagnole Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. In a stewpan, combine the carrots, onions, veal, ham, parsley, peppercorns, and butter.

  2. Stir over high heat until lightly browned.

  3. Drain off the butter and add the stock, tomato sauce, and sherry.

Simmer and thicken

  1. Bring to a boil and let it simmer for 1 hour.

  2. Stir in the brown roux with a wooden spoon until it boils.

  3. Continue boiling for another hour or until it reaches a nice brown color.

  4. If the sauce becomes too thick, add a little more stock.

Strain and store

  1. Strain through a fine cloth, remove all fat, and transfer to a basin for use.

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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  2. Carrot + tomatotop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,606 recipes

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

  3. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  4. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  5. Parsley + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,398 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Brown roux
Thickens the sauce and gives it body as it boils.
Veal
Contributes savory meaty flavor to the stock as it browns and simmers.
Onions
Caramelize during browning, adding sweetness and depth to the sauce.
Carrots
Add gentle sweetness and aromatic body as they brown with the other vegetables.
Tomato sauce
Adds acidity and color, rounding out the sauce's flavor.
Stock
Forms the liquid base that the sauce reduces and thickens in.

The step that matters

Stir in the brown roux and keep it boiling. Roux thickens only when heated enough for its starch to swell, and it can lump if added without steady stirring. Boiling for the full time also cooks out raw flour taste and lets the color deepen.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, onion, veal, ham, parsley, butter, sauce. 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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