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Brown Sauce

A savory mushroom sauce thickened with flour and butter, simmered in brown stock.

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

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 ↓

Brown Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Melt 2 ounces of butter in a saucepan over medium heat.

  2. Wash the mushrooms in cold water, trim the stalks, and peel them.

  3. Stir in 1½ ounces of flour with a wooden spoon to form a smooth paste.

  4. Add 1 pint of brown stock and the mushrooms, stirring until the sauce boils and thickens.

  5. Reduce heat and let it simmer gently for 10 minutes.

  6. Skim off any butter that rises to the top.

  7. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

  8. If needed, add 1 teaspoon of caramel for color.

  9. Strain the sauce through a fine sieve into a bowl.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

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

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + mushroomtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,253 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Flour
Thickens the stock into a smooth sauce when cooked with the butter.
Butter
Forms the base roux with the flour and carries flavour into the sauce.
Brown stock
Forms the liquid of the sauce and supplies its savoury, meaty flavour.
Mushrooms
Add earthy flavour to the sauce as they simmer in the stock.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour into the melted butter. Cooking the flour in the butter forms a smooth paste, and adding the stock gradually while stirring prevents lumps. Stirring until the sauce boils lets the starch swell and thicken it fully.

“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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