Skip to main content
Main

Mushroom Sauce

A sauce made from mushrooms, onions, butter, vinegar, water, sugar, flour, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 stir constantly until they soften.

  3. Pour in the vinegar and water, then add the mushrooms.

  4. Cover the saucepan and stir constantly for 10 minutes.

  5. Add the sugar, then sprinkle in flour, salt, and pepper to taste.

  6. Bring the mixture 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 body and savory flavor of the sauce as they soften and release liquid.
Onions
Add aromatic sweetness and depth as they soften in the butter.
Butter
Carries the aroma of the onions and adds richness to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the liquid into a sauce as it cooks with the mushrooms.
Vinegar
Adds a sharp acidity that balances the richness of the butter and mushrooms.

The step that matters

Adding the flour. Flour must be cooked into the hot liquid and stirred well, or it clumps and leaves raw floury taste and lumps instead of a smooth, thickened sauce.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, butter, vinegar, sugar, 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.

More mushroom sauce recipes

Brown 64White 28for Chicken 10Italian 8for Chicken or Rabbit 5for Poultry 5 See all 226 →

You might also like

Mushroom SoupMushroom Soup60 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes