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Supreme Sauce

A rich sauce made with reduced velouté, mushroom essence, fowl consommé, cream, chicken 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 white consommé.

  2. Bring to a boil and reduce the mixture.

  3. Stir in boiling cream just before serving.

Finish and serve

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

  2. Add chicken glaze, fresh butter, and lemon juice before serving.

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 base body of the sauce.
White consommé
Adds liquid and savory depth, thinning the velouté to a pourable consistency.
Essence of mushrooms
Adds concentrated mushroom aroma and savory flavor.
Boiling cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture.
Fresh butter
Adds fat for gloss, a rounded mouthfeel, and smoothness.
Chicken glaze
Adds concentrated meaty flavor and body.

The step that matters

Stir in boiling cream just before serving. Cream added late keeps its fresh flavor and smooth texture. Boiling it for long can cause fat separation and a dull, cooked taste, so it should be added only at the end.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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