Name: Sausages, Sauce for
Ingredients: 1 tablespoon fat from frying sausages; 1 tablespoon fresh butter or fat (if needed); flour (enough to make a smooth paste); boiling water or boiling stock (to moisten); 1 tablespoon mushroom ketchup or walnut pickle; 1 tablespoon browning (if needed)

Why it works: Butter and mushroom 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 ↓

Sausages, Sauce for

Ingredients

1 tablespoon fat from frying sausages
1 tablespoon fresh butter or fat (if needed)
flour (enough to make a smooth paste)
boiling water or boiling stock (to moisten)
1 tablespoon mushroom ketchup or walnut pickle
1 tablespoon browning (if needed)

Directions

Make the sauce

Lift the sausages from the pan and place them on a sieve to drain.
Pour away all the fat except for 1 tablespoon.
If the fat is burnt, melt fresh butter or fat in a clean saucepan.
Stir in enough flour to make a smooth paste and cook until browned.
Gradually moisten with boiling water or stock until thick as cream.
Add mushroom ketchup or walnut pickle and browning if necessary.
Boil the sauce for a few minutes.

Serve

Place the sausages in a dish and strain the sauce over them.
Serve with mustard.

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.

Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together12,525 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour + mushroomtop 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

Flour: Forms a smooth paste with the fat that thickens the sauce as it cooks.
Fat from frying sausages: Carries flavour from the sausages and forms the base for the roux.
Boiling water or stock: Liquid that hydrates the flour paste into a thick, pourable sauce.
Mushroom ketchup or walnut pickle: Adds savoury, acidic depth to the sauce.

The step that matters

Stir in enough flour to make a smooth paste and cook until browned. Flour must be cooked in the fat before liquid is added; undercooked flour tastes raw and thickens poorly, while lumps form if liquid is added too fast or without stirring.

“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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Sausages, Sauce for