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Mushroom Sauce

A sauce made with mushrooms, onions, butter, vinegar, water, soy sauce, flour, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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

  1. Soak, peel, and wash the mushrooms, then cut them into small pieces.

  2. Chop the onions.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat.

  2. Add the onions and shake the saucepan constantly.

  3. Stir in the vinegar and water.

  4. Add the mushrooms and cover tightly.

  5. Stir constantly for 10 minutes.

  6. Add the soy sauce.

  7. Sprinkle in the flour, salt, and pepper.

  8. Bring to a boil.

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. Mushroom + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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 bulk and savoury, earthy flavour of the sauce.
Butter
Carries the onions and adds richness and fat to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the liquid into a smooth sauce as it heats.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances richness.
Onions
Add sweetness and aromatic depth when softened in butter.

The step that matters

Sprinkle in the flour, salt, and pepper. Flour clumps if added to hot liquid without being stirred in well, leaving lumps. Stirring constantly while it heats lets the starch disperse and thicken the sauce smoothly.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Mustardfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, butter, vinegar, sauce, flour, pepper. 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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