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Mushroom Sauce

A sauce made with onions, butter, flour, beef gravy, sherry, and canned champignons.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and beef are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,092 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Mushroom Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Fry the onion in butter until light brown.

  2. Add flour and stir well.

  3. Mix in beef gravy, salt, pepper, nutmeg, sherry, red pepper, and champignons.

  4. Cook for 10 minutes.

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. Onion + beeftop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  3. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Fat that cooks the onion and carries flavour into the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it cooks with the butter and liquid.
Beef gravy
Supplies the liquid base and savoury depth of the sauce.
Champignons
Add earthy mushroom flavour and body to the sauce.
Sherry
Adds acidity and aromatic richness to the sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the flour to the butter and onion. Flour must be stirred well into the fat so it cooks evenly; if it is left in lumps or added to a sauce that is too hot or too cold, the sauce can turn clumpy instead of smooth and thick.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, beef, pepper, nutmeg, sherry. 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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