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Sauce

Fresh Mushroom Sauce

A quick sauce made by sautéing fresh mushrooms in butter, seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,525 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Fresh Mushroom Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a graniteware or porcelain-lined saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat.

  2. Add the prepared mushrooms and cover the saucepan tightly.

  3. Cook briskly for 2 to 3 minutes.

  4. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

Serve

  1. Serve with broiled beefsteak, birds, or sweetbreads.

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. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Melts to form the fat base that cooks the mushrooms and carries flavor.
Fresh mushrooms
Release their moisture as they cook, forming the body of the sauce.

The step that matters

Cooking the mushrooms briskly under a tight cover. Mushrooms are mostly water. Covering the pan traps the released liquid and steam, while brisk heat keeps the mushrooms cooking rather than stewing for too long, so the sauce does not turn dull and watery.

“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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