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Sauce

Espaniol or Brown Sauce

A brown sauce made with butter, flour, stock, vegetables, lemon juice, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 8,002 recipes mention both. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Espaniol or Brown Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the roux

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Fry the vegetables in the butter without burning them.

  3. Mix in the flour and fry it carefully.

Simmer and finish

  1. Add the stock and seasoning, stir, and cook well.

  2. Let the sauce cook gently for 20 minutes by the side of the fire. Skim off the butter as it rises.

  3. Add the lemon juice and strain through a fine cloth.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Carrot + tomatotop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together3,606 recipes

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

  4. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together21,601 recipes

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

  5. Mushroom + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together2,719 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Carries the frying of the vegetables and adds richness and flavor to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when fried in butter and mixed with the stock.
Flavored stock
Forms the liquid base of the sauce and carries its flavor.
Mushrooms
Add savory, earthy aroma to the sauce as they fry in the butter.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness and depth as it softens in the butter.

The step that matters

Frying the flour. Fry the flour carefully over gentle heat so it cooks to a nutty color without burning; scorched flour turns bitter and dark, and undercooked flour leaves a raw, pasty taste and weaker thickening.

Flavor stand-ins for the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, mushroom, carrot, turnip, onion, tomato):

  1. Avocadobetter flavor fit
  2. Cherryabout as good a flavor fit
  3. Limeabout as good a flavor fit
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, mushroom, carrot, turnip, onion, tomato. 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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