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Mushroom Sauce

A creamy sauce made with mushrooms, butter, flour, cream, lemon, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Mushroom Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean the mushrooms.

  2. Slice the mushrooms.

  3. Rub the mushrooms with salt to remove the tender skin if fresh.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan over medium heat.

  2. Add the mushrooms, salt, pepper, and lemon juice.

  3. Cook until the mushrooms release their liquid.

  4. Thicken the sauce with flour and additional butter.

  5. Stir in enough cream to achieve a white sauce consistency.

Finish and serve

  1. Fry the mushrooms in butter until golden.

  2. Stew the mushrooms in strong beef or veal gravy.

  3. Serve the sauce around cooked chickens or other white meats, garnished with lemon.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Nutmeg + macetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  4. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  5. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Mushrooms
Provide the main flavour and body, and release liquid that cooks into the sauce.
Butter
Carries flavour and forms the fat base for thickening the sauce.
Flour
Starch that thickens the sauce as it cooks with the butter and liquid.
Cream
Adds richness and gives the sauce a pale, smooth, velvety texture.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the rich cream.
Nutmeg
Adds a warm aroma that complements the mushrooms and cream.

The step that matters

Thicken the sauce with flour and additional butter. Flour must be cooked into the melted butter before the liquid is added. This coats the starch granules so they disperse evenly, preventing lumps and a raw, floury taste.

Swap the mace

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

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

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