Sauce Bordelaise

Sauce bordelaise takes its name from the Bordeaux wine region and was codified as one of Escoffier's compound brown sauces — a derivative of espagnole/demi-glace with the characteristic wine reduction and marrow garnish. It is the classic sauce for entrecôte bordelaise — grilled or sautéed rib-eye steak — and for any preparation where a red wine reduction of depth is appropriate.

A reduction of red wine (specifically Bordeaux, or any structured, tannic red wine) with shallots, thyme, and bay, mounted with demi-glace and finished with bone marrow — the signature garnish that distinguishes bordelaise from every other red wine sauce. The marrow is not mere enrichment: poached and laid as a crown on the finished dish, it provides a textural counterpoint to the sauce's concentrated depth — richness against richness, but one liquid and hot, the other yielding and barely warm.

Red wine's contribution to a sauce is not primarily flavour but structure. As Segnit notes, wine's tannins — polyphenols that bind to protein and fat — provide a counterpoint to the richness of beef and butter that makes each mouthful more appetising than the last. In sauce bordelaise, the slow reduction polymerises the tannins from sharp and drying to smooth and firm — providing structural backbone rather than astringency. The bone marrow adds free glutamates (particularly inosinic acid — a nucleotide that enhances the perception of glutamate) on top of the demi-glace's existing glutamate base: double umami stacking in a single sauce.