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Spanish Sauce

A savory sauce made with chestnuts, onions, sweetbread, force-meat balls, mushrooms, truffles, brown sauce, and tarragon vinegar.

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

Why it works: Mushroom and truffle are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,900 recipes. Both carry 2,4-nonadienal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Spanish Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil the chestnuts and button onions until tender.

  2. Peel the chestnuts.

  3. Boil or fry the sweetbread, then cut it into pieces.

Make the sauce

  1. Add the sweetbread, force-meat balls, mushrooms, and sliced truffles to a pot.

  2. Pour in the rich brown sauce and tarragon vinegar.

  3. Simmer the mixture and season with salt and pepper.

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 their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Mushroom + truffletop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,900 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  2. Chestnut + tarragontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together44 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Tarragon + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,547 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Chestnut + mushroomtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together474 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Onion + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Sweetbread
Provides the tender, rich meat that forms the body of the dish.
Rich brown sauce
Supplies the main liquid, body and savory depth of the sauce.
Truffles
Add a strong, earthy aroma that defines the flavor of the dish.
Chestnuts
Add starchy body and a mild, sweet, nutty flavor to the mixture.
Tarragon vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the rich brown sauce and balances its richness.

The step that matters

Simmer the mixture and season with salt and pepper. Simmering gently lets the flavors of the sauce, truffles and sweetbread blend, while seasoning added late lets you adjust salt correctly after the liquids reduce and concentrate.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chestnut, meat, mushroom, truffle, sauce, tarragon, vinegar):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chestnut, meat, mushroom, truffle, sauce, tarragon, vinegar. 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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