Skip to main content
Sauce

Italian Sauce

A savory sauce made with butter, onion, thyme, mushrooms, sherry, and stock, finished with peppercorns and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Thyme and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,557 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Italian Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Melt the butter in a pan over medium heat.

  2. Add the onion, peppercorns, bay leaf, and thyme; fry until pale brown.

  3. Stir in the flour and brown it as well.

  4. Add the mushrooms, stock, and sherry; stir until boiling.

  5. Boil gently for about 15 minutes, season with salt, and strain.

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. Thyme + mushroomtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  2. Sherry + mushroomtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,176 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-methylphenol (smoky, clove).

  3. Thyme + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  5. Onion + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Thickens the sauce and, when browned, adds a nutty flavor and color.
Butter
Carries the aromatics and forms the fat base for the roux.
Onion
Builds savory depth as it browns in the fat.
Mushrooms
Add earthy umami flavor that deepens the sauce as it simmers.
Sherry
Adds acidity and sweetness that brighten and round the sauce.
Stock
Forms the liquid base that the flour thickens and the flavors simmer into.

The step that matters

Browning the flour. Flour must be cooked until it turns color to remove raw starch taste and build nutty flavor. Stirring constantly prevents scorching, since burnt flour turns bitter and dark sauce tastes harsh.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, thyme, sherry, mushroom. 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.

You might also like

Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)186 recipesCaper SauceCaper Sauce180 recipesBrown SauceBrown Sauce141 recipesDutch SauceDutch Sauce74 recipes