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Sauce Tournee, Or, Pale Thickened Gravy

A pale gravy thickened with a roux, flavored with mushrooms and green onions.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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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 ↓

Sauce Tournee, Or, Pale Thickened Gravy

Ingredients

Directions

Make the roux

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Gradually add the flour, stirring constantly until it forms a roux.

  3. Cook the roux over low heat until it loses the raw flour taste.

Finish the gravy

  1. Slowly stir in the boiling gravy.

  2. Add mushrooms and green onions, and simmer for 30 minutes.

  3. Strain the sauce 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. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

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

  2. Mushroom + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Flour + oniontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32,460 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

Butter
Adds fat and richness, and forms the base of the roux with flour.
Flour
Thickens the gravy as its starch swells in the hot liquid.
Strong pale gravy
Provides the main liquid and savory flavor of the sauce.
Mushrooms
Add earthy flavor and body to the simmered sauce.
Green onions
Add mild onion aroma and fresh flavor during simmering.

The step that matters

Cook the roux until it loses the raw flour taste. Undercooked roux leaves a pasty, starchy flavor in the gravy. Cooking it gently over low heat drives off raw flour aromas and lets the starch thicken smoothly without scorching.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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