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Italian Sauce

A buttery mushroom and shallot sauce with wine, stock, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and shallot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,737 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Italian Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the wine reduction

  1. Melt 1 ounce of butter with 2 tablespoons chopped parsley, 2 tablespoons finely chopped mushrooms, 1 tablespoon chopped shallot, and ⅓ cup Chablis wine in a saucepan.

  2. Boil until the wine reduces to half.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt 1 ounce of butter in another saucepan and stir in ½ ounce of flour.

  2. Moisten with ½ pint of white stock and bring to a boil.

  3. Stir in the reduced wine mixture, ½ teaspoon sugar, ¼ teaspoon salt, and ½ teaspoon pepper.

  4. Simmer for 15 minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Pour 2 tablespoons of cream on top and keep hot in a bain‑marie until ready to serve.

  2. When ready, stir in the cream and use.

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. Parsley + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Mushroom + shallottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,982 recipes

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

  4. Shallot + flourtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,081 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Enriches the sauce and carries the flavour of the aromatics, giving it a rich mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a smooth sauce body when cooked with the butter.
White stock
Forms the liquid base of the sauce that the flour thickens.
Chablis wine
Adds acidity and aroma as it reduces, deepening the sauce's flavour.
Mushrooms
Contribute savoury, earthy flavour to the sauce base.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, mellow texture to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Cooking the flour into the butter. The flour must be cooked in the melted butter before liquid is added. This cooks out raw starch taste and lets the flour thicken the stock evenly instead of forming lumps.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Tarragonfits about as well
  3. Capersfits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, mushroom, shallot, wine, flour, sugar, 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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