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Sauce

Brown Sauce with Mushrooms

A savory sauce made with bacon, flour, Worcestershire sauce, mushroom catsup, sherry, stock, and mushrooms, served with eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Fredonia, N.Y. Trinity parish guild, comp. [from old catalog] · From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 33% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 50,580 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Brown Sauce with Mushrooms

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Slice the bacon, put in a frying pan and try out all the fat.

  2. Take out the bacon, add flour and stir until smooth.

  3. Add the stock; stir continually till it boils.

  4. Then add the Worcestershire sauce, mushroom catsup, salt, pepper and the mushrooms.

  5. When mushrooms are thoroughly heated, take from the fire and add the wine.

Prepare fresh mushrooms

  1. If the mushrooms are fresh, cook first in a little butter, stirring all the time.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

90Calories
7 gProtein
6 gFat
3 gCarbs
What these numbers assume: 4 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Egg1 large egg (50g)78
Black Pepper1 tsp ground (2.3g)6
Cayenne1 tsp (1.8g)6
Salt1 tsp (6g)0

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

By Fredonia, N.Y. Trinity parish guild, comp. [from old catalog]. 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. See the original page.

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. Egg + peppertop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together50,580 recipes

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

Egg and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 50,580 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 (in the method)
Thickens the stock into a smooth sauce as it cooks.
Stock (in the method)
Forms the liquid base of the sauce.
Mushrooms (in the method)
Provide the main flavour and body of the sauce.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour into the fat and then the stock. Flour must be cooked briefly in the bacon fat and stirred continually as the stock is added, otherwise it can form lumps. Constant stirring keeps the starch dispersed so the sauce thickens evenly as it boils.

“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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