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 ↓
White Sauce
Ingredients
Directions
Make the base
Melt the butter in a saucepan over medium heat.
Stir in the flour with a wooden spoon until combined.
Add the white stock and stir until it boils.
Simmer and strain
Wash and peel the mushrooms, then add them to the sauce.
Bring the sauce to a boil again, then reduce heat and simmer for 20 minutes with the lid half on.
Skim off any butter that rises to the top.
Strain the sauce through a cloth into another saucepan.
Finish the sauce
Heat the strained sauce and stir until it boils, then add the cream and lemon juice.
Let the sauce boil for 3 to 5 minutes, then pour it into a bowl and stir while it cools.
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.
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Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together12,525 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).
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Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together41,516 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Mushroom + lemontop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together4,633 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Mushroom + creamtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together4,500 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
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
- Butter
- Enriches the sauce with fat and flavour as it melts into the flour.
- Flour
- Thickens the stock into a smooth sauce by swelling as it cooks.
- White stock
- Forms the liquid body of the sauce that the flour thickens.
- Cream
- Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture to the finished sauce.
- Mushrooms
- Contribute savoury, earthy flavour as they simmer in the sauce.
The step that matters
Stirring the flour into the butter and adding the stock. Flour must be cooked briefly in the melted butter and whisked into the liquid steadily so it dissolves rather than clumping into lumps. Keep stirring as the stock comes to a boil so the starch thickens evenly.
Swap the lemon
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, mushroom, cream):
- Coconutfits better
- Vanillafits better
- Strawberryfits better
- Lemonthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, mushroom, cream. 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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