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Glite Dictionary
Chinese brown sauce

Chinese brown sauce

3.4
A dark, salty sauce made with soy sauce and broth and used on Chinese dishes
  • noun
translation icon : salsa marrón china
  • Homemade Chinese brown sauce can be prepared using soy sauce, garlic, and ginger.

Examples

  • The beef with Chinese brown sauce is one of the most popular dishes at the restaurant.

  • He asked for extra Chinese brown sauce to pour over his vegetables.

  • I love Chinese brown sauce on my stir-fried vegetables.

  • Can you pass the Chinese brown sauce?

  • I love Chinese brown sauce on my stir-fried vegetables.

  • Homemade Chinese brown sauce can be prepared using soy sauce, garlic, and ginger.

  • The beef with Chinese brown sauce is one of the most popular dishes at the restaurant.

Synonyms

brown sauce
vsChinese brown sauce
2.5

A dark savory sauce made from soy sauce used in Chinese and other Asian cooking

is darker and savory tied to one national cuisine and made with broth

Surface Forms

Chinese brown sauce singular
Chinese brown sauces plural

Morphology

Chinese + brown + sauce

The noun phrase simply combines 'Chinese' (origin), 'brown' (color/appearance) and 'sauce' (condiment), so a B1 learner who knows the constituents can infer it refers to a dark savory Chinese condiment used in cooking. This is a literal, compositional description following common culinary noun-modifier patterns cross-linguistically, without idiomatic or metaphorical shift.

Etymology

Chinese brown sauce probably comes from a simple idea: Chinese shows the cooking style, brown describes the dark colour the sauce gets from soy sauce and cooking, and sauce means a liquid seasoning. So the name came to mean the common 'dark, savory' sauce used in Chinese cooking.