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Sauce

Mushroom Sauce

A sauce made from soaked dried mushrooms, water, cream or egg yolks, and flavored with mace, pepper, nutmeg, parsley, lemon, or vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Mushroom Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mushrooms

  1. Soak the dried mushrooms in water for several hours.

  2. Boil the soaked mushrooms in the water for 10 minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Remove from heat and stir in a few tablespoons of hot cream or diluted egg yolks.

  2. Flavor with mace, pepper, nutmeg, parsley, lemon, or vanilla.

  3. Serve with poultry, game, macaroni, boiled fish, or other dishes.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Nutmeg + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

What each ingredient does

Dried mushrooms
Provide the main earthy flavor, which infuses into the soaking and boiling water.
Hot cream
Adds richness and body, giving the sauce a smooth, mellow texture.
Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce gently and add richness when stirred in off the heat.

The step that matters

Stir in the cream or egg yolks off the heat. Egg yolks thicken by gentle heat and can scramble if the sauce is too hot. Removing it from the heat first and adding only a little at a time keeps the sauce smooth.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mushroom, cream, egg, pepper, nutmeg, parsley, lemon):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, cream, egg, pepper, nutmeg, 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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