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Brown Mushroom Sauce

A sauce made with browned butter, flour, brown stock, lemon juice, sherry, and small button mushrooms.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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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

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan over medium heat until browned.

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

  3. Gradually add the brown stock while stirring.

  4. Stir in the lemon juice and sherry.

Add the mushrooms

  1. Heat the mushrooms in their own liquid; if small, use whole, if larger, cut into quarters.

  2. Drain the mushrooms 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. Mushroom + sherrytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,176 recipes

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

  2. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

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

  3. Mushroom + winetop 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. Lemon + winetop 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
Browns with the flour to build a nutty, deeper flavour and rich body.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it cooks into the butter and stock.
Brown stock
Forms the liquid base that gives the sauce its savoury depth.
Button mushrooms
Add earthy flavour and a tender, meaty texture to the sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the brown stock gradually. Stirring the stock in slowly into the hot butter and flour mixture lets the starch disperse evenly, which prevents lumps and gives a smooth, well-thickened sauce.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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