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Brown Mushroom Sauce

A savory sauce made with mushrooms, stock, and butter, finished with remaining butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Mushroom and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,525 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Brown Mushroom Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Pour off ½ cup of fat from the frying pan.

  2. Add 5 tablespoons of flour and stir until well browned.

  3. Gradually add 1 cup of brown stock and ½ cup of mushroom liquor while stirring constantly.

  4. Sauté the sliced mushrooms in 2 tablespoons of butter for 3 minutes.

  5. Add the sautéed mushrooms to the sauce.

  6. Season with salt and pepper.

  7. Just before serving, gradually add the remaining butter from the frying pan while stirring constantly.

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

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

  2. Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + mushroomtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,253 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Thickens the sauce as it cooks with the fat and liquids, giving it body.
Brown stock
Supplies the main liquid and savory flavor of the sauce.
Mushroom liquor
Adds concentrated mushroom flavor to the sauce base.
Mushrooms
Provide the main texture and earthy mushroom flavor of the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, glossy finish to the sauce.

The step that matters

Gradually add the liquids while stirring constantly. Adding stock and liquor slowly while stirring keeps the flour evenly dispersed, so the sauce thickens smoothly without lumps.

“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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