Skip to main content
Main

Brown Mushroom Sauce

A creamy sauce made from fresh mushrooms, butter, flour, cream, and mushroom liquor, seasoned with onion juice, beef extract, salt, and paprika.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Mushroom and beef are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,232 recipes. Both carry 2,4-nonadienal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Brown Mushroom Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mushrooms

  1. Remove caps from the mushrooms, wipe and peel them.

  2. Cut the mushroom stems into pieces, cover with cold water, and bring to a boil.

  3. Boil for 20 minutes.

  4. Drain the stems, reserving the liquid (you should have ½ cup).

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a pan, add onion juice, and cook until slightly browned.

  2. Stir in the flour gradually, then pour in the cream and reserved mushroom liquor while stirring constantly.

  3. Add the beef extract and season with salt and paprika.

Finish and serve

  1. Slice the mushroom caps and sauté them in butter for 5 minutes.

  2. Add the sautéed mushroom caps to the sauce just 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. Mushroom + beeftop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  2. Onion + beeftop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  4. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Mushroom + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Thickens the butter and cream into a smooth, body-rich sauce as it cooks.
Butter
Carries the onion flavour and gives richness and a smooth mouthfeel to the sauce.
Cream
Adds richness and moisture, helping the sauce feel silky and full.
Mushroom liquor
Adds concentrated mushroom flavour and moisture to the sauce base.
Beef extract
Adds savoury depth and a meaty, umami-rich backbone to the sauce.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour into the butter and adding the liquids. Flour must be stirred in gradually and the cream and liquor added while stirring constantly, so starch disperses evenly and gelatinises without lumps forming as the sauce thickens.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mushroom, butter, flour, cream, beef):

  1. Potatofits about as well
  2. Shallotfits about as well
  3. Leekfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, butter, flour, cream, beef. 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.

You might also like

Roast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCorned BeefCorned Beef87 recipesBeef BrothBeef Broth67 recipes