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Glite Dictionary
Lyonnaise sauce

Lyonnaise sauce

8.9
A brown sauce made with fried onions, parsley, and white wine, served with meat or vegetables
  • noun
  • /liˈoʊneɪs sɔs/
translation icon : salsa lyonnaise
  • You can make Lyonnaise sauce at home using onions, white wine, and fresh parsley.

Examples

  • The chef topped the steak with Lyonnaise sauce to enhance its flavor.

  • A traditional Lyonnaise sauce is often paired with roasted chicken or beef.

  • I love Lyonnaise sauce with my steak.

  • Lyonnaise sauce is delicious!

  • A traditional Lyonnaise sauce is often paired with roasted chicken or beef.

  • The chef topped the steak with Lyonnaise sauce to enhance its flavor.

  • You can make Lyonnaise sauce at home using onions, white wine, and fresh parsley.

Synonyms

brown onion sauce
vsLyonnaise sauce
2.5

A brown sauce made from fried onions, wine or vinegar, and parsley, served with meat

has identical meaning but uses a specific culinary name rather than a descriptive label

Surface Forms

Lyonnaise sauce singular
Lyonnaise sauces plural

Morphology

lyonnaise + sauce

The adjective 'lyonnaise' explicitly indicates preparation with sliced and sautéed onions, so combining it with 'sauce' straightforwardly yields 'a sauce made with sautéed onions' — the more specific ingredients (parsley, wine/vinegar) are culinary details but not required to infer the basic meaning. This adjective+noun culinary pattern is common across languages, so a B1 learner who knows both constituents can reliably predict the MWE's meaning.

Etymology

Lyonnaise sauce gets its name from the city of Lyon in France, where cooks often made a brown sauce with fried onions, a splash of white wine or vinegar, and chopped parsley. That's why Lyonnaise sauce today means a brown onion-and-wine sauce used to flavor meats or vegetables.