Name: Sauce Tournee, or Plain Sauce
Ingredients: 3-4 square pieces of lean ham; 1 tablespoon butter; a few small white mushrooms; flour (enough to make a paste); good consommé (about 3 cups)

Why it works: Butter and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,525 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Sauce Tournee, or Plain Sauce

Ingredients

3-4 square pieces of lean ham
1 tablespoon butter
a few small white mushrooms
flour (enough to make a paste)
good consommé (about 3 cups)

Directions

Make the roux and base

In a thick stewpan, melt the butter over moderate heat.
Add the ham and mushrooms, stirring until the butter is clear.
Remove the mushrooms and set them aside.
Mix flour with the butter to create a paste-like thickness.

Cook the sauce

Gradually stir in the consommé, starting with 3 tablespoons.
Continue adding consommé until the stewpan is nearly full.
Stir continuously until the sauce boils, adding more consommé if too thick.
Let it boil gradually, stirring to prevent burning.
Once reduced to a smooth consistency, strain the sauce through a tammy into a basin.

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.

Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together12,525 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Ham + mushroomtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,486 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Ham + buttertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,475 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).
Mushroom + flourtop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,253 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

Flour: Forms a paste with the butter that thickens the consommé into a sauce.
Butter: Carries the flour and adds richness and fat to the sauce.
Good consommé: Provides the liquid base that the thickened sauce is built on.
Lean ham: Adds savoury, meaty flavour to the sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the consommé gradually. Flour thickens best when it is blended smoothly into the fat before liquid goes in. Adding the consommé slowly, while stirring, prevents lumps, and keeping the sauce stirred as it boils prevents scorching on the base of the pan.

“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.