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Sauce

Mushrooms, Pickled, Sauce of

A sauce made from brown gravy, mushroom ketchup, pickled mushrooms, and their liquor, thickened with butter and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Mushroom and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,525 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Mushrooms, Pickled, Sauce of

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine brown gravy, mushroom ketchup, pickled mushrooms, and their liquor.

  2. Add butter blended with flour and stir well.

  3. Heat gently without boiling until the sauce thickens to a smooth cream consistency.

Serve

  1. Serve over roast or broiled fowl.

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

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

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Ketchup + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Mushroom + ketchuptop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Mushroom + flourtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,253 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Brown gravy
Forms the savoury liquid base of the sauce.
Pickled mushrooms
Provide the main texture and tangy flavour of the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, glossy mouthfeel to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce so it becomes smooth and creamy.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds concentrated savoury, umami depth to the sauce.

The step that matters

Heat gently without boiling. Flour-thickened sauces can turn lumpy or grainy if boiled hard or heated too fast. Gentle heat lets the starch swell evenly and thicken into a smooth cream.

“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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