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Sauce

Brown Mushroom Sauce

A savory sauce made with butter, carrot, onion, ham, flour, stock, water, beef extract, and mushrooms.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,232 recipes. Both carry 2,4-nonadienal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Brown Mushroom Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce base

  1. In a saucepan, cook the butter with the carrot, onion, and ham until browned.

  2. Add the flour and cook until well browned.

  3. Pour in the brown stock.

  4. Strain the mixture.

Reduce the mushroom liquor

  1. Cover the mushroom stems with cold water.

  2. Cook until reduced to ⅓ cup.

Finish the sauce

  1. Add the reduced water to the sauce along with the beef extract, salt, and pepper.

  2. Sauté the mushrooms in butter for 5 minutes.

  3. Add the sautéed mushrooms to the sauce.

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. Beef + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  2. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  3. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  4. Onion + beeftop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

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

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Flour
Thickens the sauce as it cooks with the butter and stock.
Butter
Carries the flavor of the vegetables and ham and helps the mushrooms brown.
Mushrooms
Add earthy flavor and body to the finished sauce.
Brown stock
Forms the liquid base that gives the sauce its savory flavor.
Beef extract
Adds concentrated meaty savoriness to the sauce.

The step that matters

Cooking the flour until well browned. Browning the flour in butter develops nutty, toasted flavor and color, and it must be stirred to avoid scorching. Under-browned flour leaves the sauce pale and tasting raw, while scorched flour turns it bitter.

Swap the carrot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, onion, ham, flour, beef, pepper, mushroom):

  1. Shallotfits about as well
  2. Potatofits about as well
  3. Chivefits about as well
  4. Carrotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, onion, ham, flour, beef, pepper, mushroom. 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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