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Italian Sauce

A savory sauce made with butter, mushrooms, parsley, onion, laurel leaf, flour, white wine, soup stock, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Italian Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter over medium heat in a stew pan.

  2. Add the mushrooms, parsley, onion, and laurel leaf; cook for a few minutes.

  3. Sprinkle in the flour and stir well.

  4. Pour in the white wine and soup stock; season with salt and pepper.

  5. Bring to a boil and simmer for 30 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve with any meats.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Parsley + laureltop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,652 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Mushroom + white winetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,765 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity).

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

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

  5. Laurel + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,666 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds fat and richness, and carries the flavour of the aromatics.
Flour
Thickens the liquid into a smooth sauce as it cooks.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma that brighten the sauce.
Mushrooms
Add earthy savoury flavour and body to the sauce.
Onion
Builds sweetness and savoury depth as it softens in the butter.

The step that matters

Stirring in the flour. Flour added to hot fat must be stirred well so it cooks evenly; otherwise lumps form and the sauce tastes raw and floury.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, mushroom, parsley, laurel, flour, white wine, pepper):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, mushroom, parsley, laurel, flour, white wine, pepper. 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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