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Sauce

Another Brown Onion Sauce

A savory sauce made from stewed onions, butter, flour, and broth, seasoned with salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. 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 the 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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Onion + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32,460 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + saucetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,078 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Mild onions
Provide the bulk of the sauce and, as they brown, its deep sweetness and color.
Butter
Carries the slow cooking of the onions and adds richness and flavor to the sauce.
Flour
Cooked in the butter, it thickens the liquid into a smooth, body-rich sauce.
Broth or gravy
Supplies the liquid that, combined with the flour, gives the sauce its final consistency.

The step that matters

Stew the onions until well colored. Onions must cook long enough for their sugars to caramelize and brown; pale onions yield a bland, less colorful sauce. Cooking over medium heat helps them brown evenly without scorching.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, sauce):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Arrowrootfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, 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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