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Mushroom Sauce for Boiled Turkey or Fowl

A creamy mushroom sauce made with butter, flour, and cream, seasoned with mace, salt, and nutmeg, served over boiled turkey or fowl.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Mace and nutmeg 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 for Boiled Turkey or Fowl

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mushrooms

  1. Clean and wash the mushrooms.

  2. Rub them with a flannel.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine mushrooms, mace, salt, nutmeg, butter, flour, and cream.

  2. Stir until the mixture boils.

  3. Pour the sauce around the turkey, fowl, or chicken.

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. Mace + nutmegtop 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. Butter + creamtop 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

Mushrooms
Provide the main flavor and body of the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavor through the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it cooks with the butter and cream.
Cream
Forms the base of the sauce and gives it a smooth, rich texture.

The step that matters

Stir until the mixture boils. Flour needs to be heated and stirred with the fat and liquid so it thickens evenly. Stopping too early leaves a raw, starchy taste and uneven texture, while scorching on the pan bottom can cause lumps and burnt flavor.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, nutmeg, butter, flour, cream. 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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