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Sauce

Mushroom Sauce

A savory sauce made with mushrooms, beef gravy, butter, flour, and mushroom ketchup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Mushroom and beef are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,232 recipes. Both carry 2,4-nonadienal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Mushroom Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Put the beef gravy into a saucepan and thicken it with the butter and flour over medium heat until it bubbles.

  2. Prepare the mushrooms by cutting off the stalks and wiping them clean of grit and dirt.

  3. If using large mushrooms, cut them into small pieces.

  4. Add the mushrooms to the gravy and let them simmer gently for about 10 minutes.

  5. Stir in the mushroom ketchup and serve.

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 + beeftop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

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

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

  3. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 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

Button mushrooms
Provide the main earthy flavor and body, softening and blending into the sauce as they simmer.
Beef gravy
Forms the savory liquid base of the sauce.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds concentrated savory depth and a hint of tang.
Butter
Adds richness and works with the flour to thicken the gravy.
Flour
Its starch thickens the gravy, giving the sauce body.

The step that matters

Thicken the gravy until it bubbles. Heating the butter and flour into the gravy until it bubbles lets the flour's starch swell and thicken the sauce. Stopping early leaves the sauce thin and can leave a raw floury taste.

“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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