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Mushroom Sauce

A savory sauce made from button mushrooms simmered in veal broth and seasoned with pepper, cayenne, salt, mace, nutmeg, and thickened with butter and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Mushroom Sauce

Oven, in the book's wordsA cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and cook

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

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

  3. Add butter rolled in flour or arrowroot to thicken the sauce.

  4. Stew gently until tender, stirring occasionally.

Serve

  1. 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

Small button mushrooms
Provide the main body and earthy flavor of the sauce as they soften and release their juices.
Veal broth
Supplies the liquid base that carries the seasonings and cooks the mushrooms tender.
Butter
Adds richness and, when worked with flour, helps thicken the sauce smoothly.
Flour or arrowroot
Thickens the liquid into a sauce, with butter coating the starch so it dissolves without lumps.

The step that matters

Adding the butter and flour mixture. Flour or arrowroot thickens only when heated in liquid; added raw or in clumps it leaves lumps, while stirring gently as it stews keeps the sauce smooth.

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.

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