Skip to main content
Main

Mushroom Sauce for Game

A sautéed mushroom sauce with butter, breadcrumbs, parsley, and optional sherry, served as a sauce for game.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Mushroom and sherry are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,176 recipes. Both carry 2-methoxy-4-methylphenol, which smells smoky, clove. The science ↓

Mushroom Sauce for Game

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash and dry the mushrooms.

  2. Chop the mushrooms very finely.

Cook the sauce

  1. Melt the butter over low heat.

  2. Add the mushrooms to the butter.

  3. Cover the saucepan.

  4. Cook for 8 minutes.

  5. Stir in the bread crumbs, salt, and white pepper.

  6. Cover the saucepan again.

  7. Cook for another 5 minutes.

  8. Add the chopped parsley and sherry if desired.

Serve

  1. Transfer the sauce to a sauceboat.

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 + sherrytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,176 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-methylphenol (smoky, clove).

  2. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  4. Mushroom + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

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

  5. Mushroom + parsleytop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,132 recipes

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

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 and release moisture.
Butter
Carries the cooking of the mushrooms and adds richness and fat to the sauce.
Fresh bread crumbs
Absorb liquid released by the mushrooms, thickening the sauce and giving it body.

The step that matters

Cook the mushrooms over low heat. Mushrooms release a lot of water as they cook. Low heat lets that liquid evaporate gradually, so the mushrooms soften and brown lightly instead of boiling and turning grey and watery.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mushroom, butter, bread, parsley, sherry):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, butter, bread, parsley, sherry. 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.

More mushroom sauce recipes

Brown 64White 28for Chicken 10Italian 8for Chicken or Rabbit 5for Poultry 5 See all 226 →

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipesMushroom SoupMushroom Soup60 recipes