Skip to main content
Sauce

Mushroom Sauce, Brown

A brown sauce made with mushrooms, beef gravy, flour, butter, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Mushroom and beef are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,232 recipes. Both carry 2,4-nonadienal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Mushroom Sauce, Brown

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Clean the mushrooms and add them to the beef gravy.

  2. Thicken the mixture with flour and butter.

  3. Set the saucepan by the fire to stew gently for 30 minutes.

  4. Skim off any scum that rises to the surface.

Finish

  1. Squeeze in the lemon juice before serving.

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. Mushroom + beeftop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

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

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

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Mushroom + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,633 recipes

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

  5. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

Mushrooms
Add earthy flavour and body to the sauce as they soften during stewing.
Beef gravy
Forms the savoury liquid base that carries all the other flavours.
Flour
Thickens the liquid so the sauce becomes smooth and clings to food.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the thickened sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, savoury flavours.

The step that matters

Thicken the mixture with flour and butter. Flour must be fully mixed into the hot liquid and kept simmering so it thickens smoothly without lumps and the raw flour taste cooks off.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Coconutfits better
  2. Avocadofits better
  3. Raisinfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, beef, flour, butter. 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.

You might also like

Hot Lemon Cream SauceHot Lemon Cream Sauce11 recipesWine Sauce (for stewed fruit)Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)186 recipesCaper SauceCaper Sauce180 recipesBrown SauceBrown Sauce141 recipes