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Sauce

Supreme Sauce

A rich sauce made from reduced Velouté, mushroom essence, chicken consommé, cream, glaze, butter, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Mushroom and chicken are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,172 recipes. Both carry 1-butyl acetate, which smells fruity, banana. The science ↓

Supreme Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine reduced Velouté sauce, essence of mushrooms, and chicken consommé.

  2. Reduce the mixture over low heat.

  3. Once reduced, stir in boiling cream.

  4. Pass the sauce through a fine sieve into a bain-marie.

Finish and serve

  1. Before serving, add chicken glaze, fresh butter, and lemon juice.

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 + chickentop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,172 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-butyl acetate (fruity, banana).

  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. Sauce + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Sauce + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Sauce and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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

Reduced velouté sauce
Forms the body of the sauce, giving it a smooth, coating consistency.
Essence of mushrooms
Adds concentrated earthy, savoury mushroom aroma and flavour.
White chicken consommé
Thins the base and adds clear, savoury chicken flavour.
Boiling cream
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the sauce.
Chicken glaze
Deepens the savoury chicken flavour and adds body to the finished sauce.
Fresh butter
Adds fat for a glossy finish and a rounder, smoother mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Reduce the mixture over low heat. Gentle reduction concentrates flavour and thickens the sauce without scorching the cream and starches. Boiling too hard can break the emulsion or cause the base to catch on the pan.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sauce, mushroom, chicken, cream, butter):

  1. Coconutfits better
  2. Avocadofits better
  3. Grapefits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sauce, mushroom, chicken, cream, butter. 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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