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A Very Rich Mushroom Sauce for Fowls or Rabbits

A sauce made from young mushrooms, cream, butter, flour, mace, nutmeg, and salt, served over fowls or rabbits.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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 ↓

A Very Rich Mushroom Sauce for Fowls or Rabbits

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mushrooms

  1. Pick, rub, and wash the mushrooms, then sprinkle with salt to remove the skin.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine the mushrooms, salt, mace, nutmeg, cream, and butter rolled in flour.

  2. Boil and stir until cooked through.

Serve

  1. Pour the sauce over the cooked chickens and garnish with lemon.

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. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  4. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Young mushrooms
Form the body of the sauce and add their earthy flavour as they cook.
Cream
Adds richness and body, thickening the sauce as it simmers.
Butter
Adds fat and flavour, and with flour helps thicken the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the butter and cream into a smooth, cohesive sauce.

The step that matters

Boil and stir until cooked through. Cream can scorch or separate if it boils too hard on the base of the pan. Stirring constantly keeps the flour-thickened sauce smooth and evenly heated.

Swap the mace

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

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

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

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