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Sauce

Brown Mushroom Sauce

A savory sauce made from mushrooms, brown stock, butter, flour, truffle, salt, and paprika.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Mushroom and truffle are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,900 recipes. Both carry 2,4-nonadienal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Brown Mushroom Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mushrooms

  1. Clean the mushrooms.

  2. Remove the caps.

  3. Finely chop the caps.

  4. Break the stems into pieces.

Make the sauce

  1. Cook the stems in butter for five minutes.

  2. Add flour and gradually pour in the brown stock.

  3. Bring to a boil and cook for three minutes.

  4. Strain the mixture.

  5. Season with salt and paprika.

  6. Bring to a boil again.

  7. Add the chopped raw mushroom caps and the finely chopped truffle.

  8. Serve immediately.

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 + truffletop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,900 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 + truffletop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,209 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  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

Mushrooms
Provide the main flavour and body of the sauce.
Butter
Carries flavour and enriches the sauce while the stems cook.
Flour
Thickens the brown stock into a smooth sauce.
Brown stock
Forms the liquid base that the flour thickens.
Truffle
Adds a concentrated earthy aroma at the end.

The step that matters

Add flour and gradually pour in the brown stock. Adding the liquid gradually while the flour is in the pan lets the starch disperse evenly, which prevents lumps and gives a smooth, thick sauce.

“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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