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A Cream Sauce for Fillet

A creamy mushroom and truffle sauce seasoned with lemon, cayenne, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

A Cream Sauce for Fillet

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Drain the mushrooms through a colander and mince them finely in a wooden bowl.

  2. Add the drained and minced truffles and the juice of one lemon.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat, then stir in the flour.

  2. Add the minced shallot or onion and stir constantly to prevent burning until golden.

  3. Slowly pour in the milk while stirring to avoid lumps, and cook for about five minutes.

  4. Add the minced mushrooms and truffles, and let the mixture simmer for a few minutes.

  5. Season with cayenne pepper and salt, ensuring the sauce is thick before adding the mushrooms.

Reheat and serve

  1. If made in advance, reheat the sauce in boiling water before serving, then add the juice of the remaining lemon.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Mushroom + shallottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,982 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Mushroom + truffletop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,900 recipes

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

  4. Lemon + shallottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,523 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Flour + shallottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,081 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Provides fat and richness, and carries the flavour of the shallot or onion.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as its starch swells in the hot butter and milk.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that becomes the body of the cream sauce.
Mushrooms
Add earthy flavour and moisture that becomes part of the sauce.
Truffles
Add a concentrated aroma that gives the sauce its distinctive character.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich butter and cream flavours.

The step that matters

Pour the milk in slowly while stirring. Flour clumps when liquid is added all at once. Adding the milk gradually while stirring separates the starch granules so they hydrate evenly, keeping the sauce smooth and thickening it properly.

“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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