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Sauce

Mushroom Sauce

A creamy sauce made with young mushrooms, cream, butter, flour, salt, nutmeg, and mace, 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 ↓

Mushroom Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mushrooms

  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 rubbed in flour.

  2. Boil the mixture, stirring well until cooked.

Serve

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

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
Form the body of the sauce and add their earthy flavour as they cook down.
Cream
Provides richness and a smooth, thickened body when boiled with the flour.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavour and helping the sauce feel smooth.
Flour
Rubbed into the butter, it thickens the cream as the mixture boils.

The step that matters

Boil the mixture, stirring well until cooked. Flour thickens only when heated enough, and cream can scorch or separate on the base of the pan. 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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