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Sauce

Fine Herb Sauce

A savory sauce made with onion, butter, mushrooms, Allemande or Espagnole sauce, and parsley.

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

Fine Herb Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

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

  2. Add the chopped onion and fry lightly until softened.

  3. Stir in the chopped mushrooms and cover the saucepan.

  4. Cook until the moisture from the mushrooms is reduced.

  5. Add the Allemande or Espagnole sauce and bring to a slow boil.

  6. Let it simmer for 20 minutes, then skim off any foam.

  7. Stir in the chopped parsley before serving.

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

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

  2. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  3. Onion + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

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

  4. Mushroom + parsleytop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,132 recipes

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

  5. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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

Onion
Softens and adds savoury sweetness as it fries in butter.
Mushrooms
Add earthy flavour; releasing and reducing their moisture concentrates the taste.
Allemande or espagnole sauce
Forms the base of the sauce, giving body and most of its flavour.
Parsley
Adds fresh, green aroma and a bright finish.

The step that matters

Let the mushroom moisture cook off. If mushrooms are not cooked long enough, their released water dilutes the sauce and keeps it thin. Cooking them until the liquid evaporates concentrates their flavour and lets the butter and onion flavours come through before the base sauce is added.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, butter, mushroom, sauce. 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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