Name: Mushroom Sauce
Ingredients: 12 button mushrooms; ½ cup mushroom catsup; ½ pint brown sauce

Why it works: Mushroom and sauce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,480 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Mushroom Sauce

Ingredients

12 button mushrooms
½ cup mushroom catsup
½ pint brown sauce

Directions

Put the mushrooms in a small saucepan with the mushroom catsup and brown sauce.
Boil for 10 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.

Mushroom + saucetop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together4,480 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Button mushrooms: Provide the main body and earthy flavor of the sauce as they soften and release their juices.
Mushroom catsup: Adds concentrated mushroom flavor and savory depth to the sauce.
Brown sauce: Supplies the base body, color and savory richness of the sauce.

“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.