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A Very Fine Mushroom Sauce, for F 'owls, or Rabbits

A creamy mushroom sauce made with fresh mushrooms, cream, butter, and spices, served over fowls or rabbits.

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 F 'owls, or Rabbits

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mushrooms

  1. Wash and pick the mushrooms.

  2. Rub the mushrooms with coarse sea salt to remove the tender skin.

Make the sauce

  1. Place the mushrooms in a saucepan with a little salt, nutmeg, mace, cream, and butter mixed with flour.

  2. Cook and stir until done.

Serve

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

  2. If fresh mushrooms are unavailable, use pickled mushrooms with a little mushroom powder.

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
Makes the sauce rich and smooth as it thickens with heat.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, helping the sauce feel silky.
Flour
Mixed with butter to thicken the cream into a sauce.

The step that matters

Cook and stir until done. Cream and flour can scorch or form lumps if left unattended on heat. Constant stirring keeps the sauce smooth and evenly thickened.

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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