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Sauce

Italian Sauce, Brown

A brown Italian sauce made with mushrooms, shallots, butter, stock, flour, Madeira, citrus juice, sugar, and coulis.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Mushroom and shallot are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,982 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Italian Sauce, Brown

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a saucepan, combine chopped mushrooms and shallots with butter and stock.

  2. Add pepper and salt, and cook on low heat for a few minutes.

  3. Stir in flour and cook for a few more minutes.

  4. Pour in Madeira and add coulis to achieve desired sauce quantity.

  5. Squeeze in the juice of a Seville orange or half a lemon, and add sugar. Stir well and serve.

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 + shallottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,982 recipes

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

  2. Shallot + flourtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,081 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + orangetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,402 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Mushrooms
Provide the main savoury body and earthy flavour of the sauce as they soften and release moisture.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour while the shallots and mushrooms cook.
Flour
Thickens the sauce by absorbing liquid once it is cooked briefly in the fat.
Madeira
Adds fortified wine depth and aroma, and helps lift and round the sauce's flavour.
Sugar
Balances the acidity of the citrus and rounds out the sauce's flavour.

The step that matters

Cooking the flour. Flour must cook for a few minutes in the butter and mushroom mixture before liquid is added, so it loses its raw starchy taste and thickens smoothly without lumps.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Avocadofits better
  3. Cherryfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, shallot, butter, pepper, flour, sugar. 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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