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Brown Mushroom Sauce

A savory sauce made with butter, flour, sherry, lemon juice, brown stock, and sautéed mushrooms.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sherry and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,176 recipes. Both carry 2-methoxy-4-methylphenol, which smells smoky, clove. The science ↓

Brown Mushroom Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan and brown it richly.

  2. Add the flour and continue browning, stirring constantly.

  3. Gradually add the brown stock while continuing to stir.

  4. Stir in the lemon juice and sherry.

Add the mushrooms

  1. Heat the mushrooms in their own liquor.

  2. If using small button mushrooms, leave them whole; if larger, cut them into quarters.

  3. Drain the mushrooms from the hot liquor and add them to the sauce.

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. Sherry + mushroomtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,176 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-methylphenol (smoky, clove).

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

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

  3. Wine + mushroomtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,632 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-propylphenol (allspice, anise).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Wine + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,157 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Butter and flour 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

Butter
Browned butter gives the sauce its rich, nutty flavour and forms the base for the roux.
Flour
Cooked with the butter, it thickens the sauce and gives it body.
Brown stock
Forms the liquid of the sauce and carries its savoury, meaty flavour.
Mushrooms
Add earthy flavour and a tender texture to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Browning the butter and flour. Cooking the butter and flour together until richly browned builds the colour and nutty depth of the sauce. Stirring constantly prevents scorching, which would leave a bitter taste.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Plumfits better
  2. Grapefits better
  3. Applefits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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