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Italian Sauce

A sauce made with Espagnole, shallots, mushrooms, thyme, bay leaf, sweet oil, optional Chablis, and stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Shallot and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,476 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Italian Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Place the shallots in a small piece of muslin and squeeze them in cold water to extract some flavor.

  2. Heat the oil in a stewpan and add the shallots.

Make the sauce

  1. Cook for a few minutes without browning.

  2. Add the wine, mushrooms, thyme, bay leaf, and stock.

  3. Reduce the mixture well.

  4. Stir in the Espagnole sauce.

  5. Boil for 10 minutes.

Finish

  1. Remove the herbs.

  2. Skim off any oil before serving.

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. Shallot + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,476 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Shallot + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,982 recipes

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

  3. Mushroom + thymetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,557 recipes

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

  4. Sauce + shallottop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,303 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Sauce + mushroomtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,480 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Espagnole sauce
Forms the body and main savory flavor of the finished sauce.
Shallots
Soften when gently cooked, adding a mild, sweet aromatic base.
Mushrooms
Add earthy savory depth and release moisture that helps build the sauce.
Chablis
Adds acidity and aroma, and reducing it concentrates its flavor.
Stock
Provides liquid and savory flavor that thins and extends the sauce.
Sweet oil
Carries the heat and flavor into the shallots and helps them cook evenly.

The step that matters

Cook the shallots without browning. Gentle cooking softens shallots and draws out their sweetness. Browning brings bitter, harsh flavors that carry into the whole sauce and are hard to remove later.

Swap the thyme

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits about as well
  3. Thymethe original
  4. Garlicfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sauce, shallot, mushroom. 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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