Name: Brown Mushroom Sauce
Ingredients: ½ pint brown sauce; liquor from 1 can of mushrooms; ½ can of mushrooms; 1 glass of sherry (optional)

Why it works: Mushroom and sherry 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

½ pint brown sauce
liquor from 1 can of mushrooms
½ can of mushrooms
1 glass of sherry (optional)

Directions

Add the liquor from the can of mushrooms and half of the mushrooms to the brown sauce.
Stew for five minutes.
If using sherry, add it to the sauce and allow it to cook down if the sauce is too thin.

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.

Mushroom + sherrytop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,176 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-methylphenol (smoky, clove).
Sauce + mushroomtop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together4,480 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Sauce + sherrytop 23% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,097 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Brown sauce: Forms the base of the sauce, providing most of its body and savoury flavour.
Mushrooms: Add earthy flavour and soft texture to the sauce.
Mushroom liquor: Adds concentrated mushroom flavour and moisture to the sauce.

“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.