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Sauce

Italian Sauce

A sauce made with butter, shallots, mushrooms, tomato sauce, parsley, lemon juice, and soy sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Italian Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

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

  2. Add the chopped shallots or onions and fry until brown.

  3. Stir in the chopped mushrooms and cook until softened.

  4. Add the strained tomato sauce, chopped parsley, and lemon juice.

  5. Thicken slightly and darken with a few drops of soy sauce.

Serve

  1. Pour the sauce around the timbales 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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Shallot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

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

  3. Shallot + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,982 recipes

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

  4. Shallot + lemontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,523 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Mushroom + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,719 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps the shallots and mushrooms brown in the pan.
Shallots or onions
Provide aromatic sweetness and savoury depth as they brown.
Mushrooms
Add earthy flavour and body to the sauce as they soften and release moisture.
Strained tomato sauce
Forms the base of the sauce, supplying acidity and tomato flavour.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the tomato and mushrooms.

The step that matters

Thicken slightly and darken with soy sauce. Adding soy sauce too early or in too large an amount can make the sauce overly salty and dark. Adding a few drops near the end lets the cook control colour and seasoning while the sauce reduces slightly.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against shallot, butter, mushroom, sauce, parsley, lemon. 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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