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Brown Sauce

A savory sauce made with browned butter, flour, stock, vegetables, herbs, spices, and ketchup varieties, finished with Worcestershire and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Brown Sauce

Why it works: Thyme and marjoram match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 2,225 recipes mention both. Both carry terpineol, which smells pine, woody. The science ↓

Brown Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan over medium heat until brown.

  2. Stir in the flour and mix until smooth.

  3. Thin the mixture with the boiling stock.

  4. Add the onion, carrot, parsley, thyme, marjoram, mace, black pepper, and salt.

  5. Simmer for 10 minutes, then strain the sauce.

Finish and serve

  1. Stir in the Worcestershire sauce, tomato ketchup, mushroom ketchup, walnut ketchup, and lemon juice until well mixed.

  2. Serve with beefsteak, mutton chops, or warmed-over meats.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Thyme + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together2,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).

  2. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Parsley + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,979 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together8,053 recipes

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

  5. Carrot + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together687 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Browns in the pan to add a nutty, toasted flavour and richness to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a smooth, body-rich sauce when cooked with the butter.
Boiling stock
Forms the liquid base of the sauce and carries the savoury flavour.
Onion
Adds savoury depth and sweetness as it softens and flavours the simmering liquid.
Worcestershire sauce
Adds tangy, savoury acidity and depth to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Browning the butter and flour. Butter cooked until brown develops toasted, nutty flavours through browning reactions. Stirring the flour in well keeps it from clumping, so the sauce thickens smoothly.

Flavor stand-ins for the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, onion, carrot, parsley, thyme, marjoram):

  1. Winter savorybetter flavor fit
  2. Sagebetter flavor fit
  3. Tarragonbetter flavor fit
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, onion, carrot, parsley, thyme, marjoram. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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