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Mushroom Sauce

A sauce made with mushrooms, onions, butter, vinegar, water, soy sauce, flour, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Mushroom and butter 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 ↓

Mushroom Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak, peel, and wash the mushrooms, then cut them into small pieces.

Cook the sauce

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

  2. Add the chopped onions and stir continuously until softened.

  3. Pour in the vinegar and water, then add the mushrooms.

  4. Cover the saucepan and cook for 10 minutes.

  5. Stir in the soy sauce, then sprinkle in the flour, salt, and pepper.

  6. Bring the mixture to a boil.

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

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

  2. Mushroom + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

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

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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 flavour of the sauce as they soften and release moisture.
Onions
Add sweetness and savoury depth as they soften in the butter.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it heats with the liquid.
Butter
Adds fat and richness and carries flavour from the onions.

The step that matters

Stirring the onions until softened. Onions cooked over medium heat with constant stirring soften and sweeten gradually; if they brown too fast they turn bitter and can scorch on the pan base, affecting the sauce's flavour.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mushroom, butter, vinegar, sauce, flour, pepper):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Mustardfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, butter, vinegar, sauce, flour, pepper. 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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