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A Very Fine Mushroom, Sauce for Fowls or Rabbits

A creamy mushroom sauce seasoned with salt, nutmeg, mace, and butter, served over chicken or rabbit.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

A Very Fine Mushroom, Sauce for Fowls or Rabbits

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash and pick the mushrooms, rubbing them with salt to remove the tender skin.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine the mushrooms, salt, nutmeg, mace, cream, and butter mixed with flour.

  2. Boil and stir until cooked through.

Serve

  1. Pour the sauce around the cooked chickens or rabbits and garnish with lemon.

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

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

  3. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  4. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, 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

Young mushrooms
Provide the main body and earthy flavour of the sauce.
Cream
Adds richness and body, thickening the sauce as it simmers.
Butter
Adds fat and rich flavour, and carries the flour for thickening.
Flour
Thickens the sauce so it coats the meat.

The step that matters

Boil and stir until cooked through. Cream scorches and can split if it boils too hard or sits unstirred on the bottom of the pan. Stirring constantly over moderate heat keeps the flour-thickened sauce smooth and evenly cooked.

Swap the mace

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

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

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