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Mushroom Sauce

A sauce made from fresh mushrooms, brown stock, mushroom liquor, butter, flour, egg yolk, and cream, served with beefsteak or poultry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Mushroom Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mushrooms

  1. Peel the mushrooms.

  2. Break the mushrooms into small pieces.

  3. Cook the mushrooms in hot water for five minutes.

  4. Drain the mushrooms.

Make the sauce

  1. Make a white sauce using the mushroom liquor and cream.

  2. Add the mushrooms to the sauce.

  3. Reheat the sauce with the mushrooms.

  4. Make a roux with butter and browned flour for the brown sauce.

  5. Stir in brown stock and mushroom liquor.

  6. Add salt and pepper.

  7. Cook the sauce for ten minutes.

  8. Dilute the egg yolk.

  9. Add the diluted egg yolk to the sauce.

  10. Add cream to the sauce.

  11. Add the mushrooms to the sauce again.

  12. Cook the sauce for another ten minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve the sauce with beefsteak or poultry.

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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Mushroom + creamtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,500 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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.
Browned flour
Thickens the sauce and adds a deeper, toasted colour and flavour.
Butter
Forms the roux with the flour and adds richness to the sauce.
Egg yolk
Enriches the sauce and thickens it gently when added warm.
Brown stock
Forms the liquid base of the sauce and adds savoury depth.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolk. Egg yolk can curdle or scramble if it meets hot sauce directly. Diluting it first and adding it off the heat or gently lets it thicken smoothly.

“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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