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Mushroom Sauce for Boiled Turkey or Fowl

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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

  1. Clean and wash the mushrooms.

  2. Rub them with a flannel.

Make the sauce

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

  2. Stir continuously until the mixture boils.

Serve

  1. 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 body and earthy flavour of the sauce.
Cream
Adds richness and body, giving the sauce a smooth, thick texture as it heats.
Butter, rolled in flour
Flour coated on the butter thickens the sauce as it heats and melts into it.

The step that matters

Stir continuously until the mixture boils. Cream and flour-thickened butter can scorch on the bottom of the pan or curdle if left unattended. Constant stirring spreads the heat evenly and keeps the sauce smooth as the flour thickens it.

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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