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Sauce

Brown Sauce

A savory sauce made with flour, butter, stock, ham or bacon, tomato, herbs, sherry, and bouquet garni.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Brown Sauce

Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 9,057 recipes mention both. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Brown Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the roux

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat.

  2. Add the flour and stir until it turns a soft light brown, being careful not to burn it.

Build and simmer the sauce

  1. Gradually dilute the roux with the dark stock, stirring continuously.

  2. Add the ham or bacon, tomato, parsley, thyme, and bay leaf to the mixture.

  3. Pour in the sherry and add the bouquet garni.

  4. Simmer the sauce until it reduces by one-fourth to intensify the flavor.

Finish

  1. Strain the sauce before serving.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Tomato + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together2,370 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  3. Tomato + parsleytop 8% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together5,398 recipes

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

  4. Thyme + sherrytop 11% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together702 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter share little aroma chemistry, yet 124,287 recipes mention both: they likely 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

Flour
Thickens the stock when cooked into the butter as a roux.
Butter
Carries the flour into a roux and adds richness to the sauce.
Dark-flavored stock
Forms the liquid base and supplies the sauce's main savory flavor.
Ham or bacon
Adds smoky, salty depth to the stock as it simmers.
Tomato
Adds acidity and a mild sweetness that balances the rich roux.

The step that matters

Browning the roux. Stirring the flour and butter until soft light brown develops nutty flavor and color. Past that point it turns bitter and dark, and a burnt roux spoils the whole sauce.

Flavor stand-ins for the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, butter, ham, parsley, thyme, sherry):

  1. Shallotbetter flavor fit
  2. Leekbetter flavor fit
  3. Carrotbetter flavor fit
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, ham, parsley, thyme, sherry. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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