Name: Mushroom Sauce
Ingredients: 1 can mushrooms, chopped fine; 1 pint veal or chicken stock; 1 hard boiled egg yolk per person; salt to taste; pepper to taste; paprika to taste

Why it works: Mushroom and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13,580 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Mushroom Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Chop the mushrooms finely.
Place the chopped mushrooms in a pot with the veal or chicken stock and bring to a boil.
For each person, add the yolk of one hard boiled egg.
Season the sauce highly with salt, pepper, and paprika.

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.

Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together13,580 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Mushroom + vealtop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,446 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).
Veal + peppertop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together10,049 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Mushroom + eggtop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,987 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Veal + eggtop 28% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together6,845 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Mushrooms: Provide the main body and earthy flavor of the sauce once simmered in stock.
Veal or chicken stock: Supplies the liquid base and savory depth that carries the sauce.
Hard boiled egg yolk: Adds richness and thickens the sauce as it is stirred in.

“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.