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A roux-based sauce flavored with ketchup and optional mushrooms.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Sauces

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Heat the butter in a frying pan until it begins to brown.

  2. Add the flour and stir over the heat until smooth and dark-colored.

  3. Remove from heat and add the stock, stirring until it boils.

  4. Simmer for three minutes.

  5. Season with salt, pepper, and tomato ketchup.

  6. For added flavor, stir in previously stewed chopped mushrooms.

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 + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Tomato + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,719 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Pepper + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 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

Butter
Fat that carries flavor and, as it browns, adds a nutty aroma to the roux.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when cooked with fat and liquid, forming a roux.
Stock
Liquid that hydrates the flour so the sauce thickens as it boils.
Tomato ketchup
Adds sweetness, acidity and tomato flavor to the sauce.

The step that matters

Stir the flour into the browned butter until smooth before adding stock. Flour must be fully mixed into the fat and cooked briefly so it dissolves evenly; otherwise the liquid clumps and the sauce turns lumpy rather than smooth.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Potatofits about as well
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, milk, pepper, ketchup, 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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