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Sauce

Brown Mushroom Sauce

A sauce made with flour, butter, brown stock, and mushrooms.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and mushroom 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. Mix the flour, salt, and pepper in a bowl.

  2. In a pan, brown the butter over medium heat.

  3. Stir in the flour mixture until well browned.

  4. Gradually add the brown stock, stirring until smooth.

  5. Add the mushrooms, bring to a boil, and serve.

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. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + mushroomtop 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 and, browned in butter, adds a nutty depth of flavour.
Butter
Adds fat and richness and helps the flour brown in the pan.
Brown stock
Forms the liquid base of the sauce and carries its savoury flavour.
Mushrooms
Add earthy flavour and body to the sauce.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour into the butter until well browned. Flour and fat cook together to form a roux. Cooking it until browned develops nutty flavour, but it can scorch quickly over medium heat, so stir constantly. Adding stock to a roux cooked this way also helps it blend 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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