Skip to main content
Main

Mushroom Sauce

A sauce made by stewing button mushrooms in veal broth with spices, thickened with butter and flour.

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

Why it works: Mace and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,557 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Mushroom Sauce

Oven, in the book's wordsA cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash and pick the mushrooms, removing the thick skin.

Make the sauce

  1. Stew the mushrooms in veal broth with pepper, cayenne, salt, mace, and nutmeg.

  2. Add butter rolled in flour to thicken the sauce.

  3. Stew gently until the mushrooms are tender, stirring occasionally.

  4. Keep the sauce hot and pour it over fowls, veal, or rabbit.

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. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

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

  3. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Button mushrooms
Provide the main body and earthy flavour of the sauce as they soften in the broth.
Veal broth
Supplies the liquid base and savoury meaty flavour in which the mushrooms are stewed.
Butter
Adds richness and body, and carries the flour that thickens the sauce.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the sauce as it cooks with the melted butter, giving it a smooth body.

The step that matters

Add butter rolled in flour to thicken the sauce. Flour needs to be cooked in the hot liquid for it to swell and thicken smoothly. Adding it too fast or without stirring can leave lumps or a floury taste.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mushroom, veal, pepper, nutmeg, butter, flour):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, veal, pepper, nutmeg, butter, flour. 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.

More mushroom sauce recipes

Brown 64White 28for Chicken 10Italian 8for Chicken or Rabbit 5for Poultry 5 See all 226 →

You might also like

Mushroom SoupMushroom Soup60 recipesVeal PattiesVeal Patties50 recipesBeef, Mutton, or Veal BrothBeef, Mutton, or Veal Broth6 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipes