Skip to main content
Sauce

Italian Sauce

A butter-based sauce with garlic, parsley, lemon, thyme, mushrooms, consommé, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Italian Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a small saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat.

  2. Add the garlic and sauté until fragrant.

  3. Stir in the parsley, lemon, thyme, and mushrooms; cook until softened.

  4. Add the consommé and simmer until thickened.

  5. Remove the garlic, mix in additional butter, and heat through.

  6. Before serving, squeeze in a little 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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Lemon + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,973 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Clove + thymetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Garlic + parsleytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,308 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds richness and body, and carries the flavour of the aromatics.
Mushrooms
Contribute savoury, earthy depth as they soften in the butter.
Consommé
Forms the liquid base, which reduces and thickens the sauce as it simmers.

The step that matters

Simmer until thickened. Simmering the consommé reduces its water and concentrates flavour and body. Too little reduction leaves the sauce thin, while overcooking can make it salty and sticky.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, garlic, parsley, lemon, thyme, mushroom):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Sagefits better
  3. Rosemaryfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, garlic, parsley, lemon, thyme, mushroom. 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.

You might also like

Hot Lemon Cream SauceHot Lemon Cream Sauce11 recipesWine Sauce (for stewed fruit)Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)186 recipesCaper SauceCaper Sauce180 recipesBrown SauceBrown Sauce141 recipes