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Sauce

Mushroom Sauce

A sauce made from mushrooms, brown gravy, onion, cloves, pepper, salt, flour, and butter, simmered and strained.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Mushroom Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Gently stew the mushrooms in brown gravy for 2 hours.

  2. Add the chopped onion, cloves, pepper, and salt.

  3. Brown the flour and butter together in a small saucepan.

  4. Add the browned flour and butter to the mushroom mixture.

  5. Strain the sauce through a sieve 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. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

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

  3. Mushroom + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

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

  4. Mushroom + clovetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,663 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  5. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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 earthy flavor of the sauce as they soften during stewing.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when browned with butter and added to the liquid.
Butter
Carries the browned flour and adds richness to the sauce.
Brown gravy
Serves as the cooking liquid that gives the sauce its savory base.

The step that matters

Browning the flour and butter. Flour cooked in butter must be browned evenly without burning, because scorched flour gives a bitter taste and weakens its thickening power.

Swap the onion

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

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

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