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Sauce

Mushroom Sauce

A creamy sauce made from mushrooms, butter, cream, and corn flour, seasoned with nutmeg, mace, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and mace are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,557 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Mushroom Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Stew the mushrooms in enough water to cover them until tender, then drain them.

  2. Add the cream, melted butter, and seasonings.

  3. Stir and stew over a clear fire until heated through.

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. Nutmeg + macetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

  4. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  5. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Young mushrooms
Provide the bulk and earthy flavour of the sauce.
Melted butter
Adds fat, which gives the sauce richness and a smooth mouthfeel.
Cream
Adds body and richness, forming the base of the sauce.
Corn flour
Thickens the sauce as its starch swells when heated.

The step that matters

Stir and stew over a clear fire until heated through. Cream can separate or scorch if it boils hard or sits on direct heat. Gentle, constant stirring keeps the sauce smooth, and the starch needs sufficient heat to thicken it.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mushroom, butter, cream, corn, flour, nutmeg, milk):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, butter, cream, corn, flour, nutmeg, milk. 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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