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Sauce

Another Brown Onion Sauce

A savory sauce made from minced onions, butter, flour, broth, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 42,912 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Another Brown Onion Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

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

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

  3. Pour in enough broth or gravy to keep the sauce thick.

  4. Season with salt to taste and serve.

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Onions
Break down slowly in butter, releasing sugars that brown and sweeten the sauce.
Butter
Carries the onions' heat and adds richness and flavor to the sauce.
Flour (in the method)
Thickens the sauce as it cooks briefly with the butter and onion juices.
Broth or gravy
Adds liquid and savory depth, loosening the thickened base into a sauce.

The step that matters

Stew the onions until well colored. Onions need slow cooking over medium heat so their sugars caramelize into deep color and flavor; rushing leaves them pale and tasting harsh.

“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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