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Sauce

Mushroom Sauce of Dried Italian Mushrooms

A sauce made from dried Italian mushrooms, onion, butter, flour, stock, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 of Dried Italian Mushrooms

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mushrooms

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

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, heat the minced onion with the butter over medium heat.

  2. Add the flour and stir until it begins to brown.

  3. Pour in the mushroom soaking water and the stock or water.

  4. Season with salt and pepper, then let it simmer for 15 to 20 minutes.

  5. Strain the sauce through a fine sieve.

  6. Add the mushrooms back into the sauce and cook slowly until tender, about 20 to 30 minutes.

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

Dried italian mushrooms
Provide the main earthy flavor, and their soaking water adds savory depth to the sauce.
Butter
Adds fat and rich flavor while cooking the onion gently.
Flour
Thickens the sauce and browns slightly to add color and a toasted note.

The step that matters

Browning the flour. Stirring the flour in butter until it just begins to brown cooks out its raw taste and builds color. Going too far can scorch it and make the sauce bitter.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, butter, 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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