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Spanish Sauce

A mushroom and vegetable sauce made with butter, flour, stock, tomato sauce, and optional sherry.

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 shallot are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,982 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Spanish Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Fry the mushrooms, carrot, onion, and shallot in 1 tablespoon of butter until browned, then drain off the butter.

Make the sauce

  1. In a copper saucepan, melt 2 ounces of butter and mix with 2 ounces of flour over heat until pale brown.

  2. Add 1 pint of stock, the fried vegetables, and ½ cup of tomato sauce to the saucepan.

  3. Simmer gently for 30 minutes with the cover off.

Finish

  1. Strain the sauce through a fine sieve.

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 + shallottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,982 recipes

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

  2. Carrot + tomatotop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,606 recipes

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

  3. Shallot + flourtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,081 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  5. Mushroom + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked 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

Flour
Thickens the butter and stock into a smooth, lightly bodied sauce when cooked.
Butter
Carries the browning of the vegetables and forms the roux base that flour thickens.
Stock
Provides the liquid that the roux thickens and the vegetable flavour is simmered into.
Tomato sauce
Adds acidity and a deeper, savoury colour and flavour to the sauce.
Mushrooms
Contribute savoury, earthy flavour to the sauce base.

The step that matters

Cooking the flour and butter until pale brown. Cooking the roux long enough removes raw flour taste and gives thickening power, but if it browns too far the sauce turns dark and loses its thickening strength. Stir constantly over moderate heat to keep it even.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, carrot, onion, shallot, 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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