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Mushrooms, Sauce Of, Brown

A brown sauce made from mushrooms, beef gravy, mushroom ketchup, butter, flour, and optional lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Mushroom and beef are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,232 recipes. Both carry 2,4-nonadienal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Mushrooms, Sauce Of, Brown

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Rinse the mushrooms in cold water, drain, and dry with a soft cloth.

  2. Cut flap mushrooms into pieces.

Make the sauce

  1. Simmer the mushrooms in ½ pint of beef gravy for 20 to 25 minutes.

  2. Add mushroom ketchup and blend in the butter with flour.

  3. If desired, flavor with lemon peel and squeeze in some lemon juice before serving.

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 + beeftop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,232 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Mushroom + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,633 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, 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

Button or flap mushrooms
Provide the main body and earthy flavor of the sauce.
Beef gravy
Supplies the liquid base and savory meaty flavor for the sauce.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds concentrated mushroom depth and savory umami to the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, glossy mouthfeel to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it is blended with the butter and simmered.

The step that matters

Blend the butter with flour. Flour needs to be fully blended into the butter and liquid so it thickens evenly without lumps. Adding it directly to hot liquid can clump, and the starch must be combined well for the sauce to become smooth and properly thickened.

Swap the lemon

The recipe marks lemon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mushroom, beef, ketchup, butter, flour):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Avocadofits about as well
  3. Raisinfits about as well
  4. Coconutfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, beef, ketchup, butter, flour. 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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