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Sauce

Italian Sauce

A savory sauce made with butter, flour, onion, mushrooms, peppercorns, bay leaf, thyme, sherry, and stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Mushroom and thyme are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,557 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Italian Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

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

  2. Add the chopped onion, peppercorns, bay leaf, and thyme; fry until pale brown.

  3. Stir in the flour and cook until browned.

  4. Add the chopped mushrooms, stock, and sherry; stir until boiling.

  5. Boil gently for about 15 minutes, season with salt, and strain.

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. Mushroom + thymetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  2. Mushroom + sherrytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,176 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-methylphenol (smoky, clove).

  3. Onion + thymetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  5. Onion + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Enriches the sauce and carries the flavours of the aromatics as it cooks.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it cooks with the butter and sets its body.
Onion
Adds savoury sweetness and depth as it browns in the butter.
Mushrooms
Contribute earthy savoury flavour and body to the liquid.
Sherry
Adds acidity and a deeper, aromatic note to the sauce.
Stock
Forms the main liquid that the roux thickens and the flavours simmer in.

The step that matters

Cooking the flour until browned. Cooking the flour in butter long enough builds a nutty, browned flavour and colour, but too little cooking leaves a raw, pasty taste, and burning gives bitterness. Watch the colour closely.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, mushroom, thyme, sherry. 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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