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Italian Sauce

A savory sauce made with stock, ham, mushrooms, onion, and Béchamel, sweetened with sugar and brightened with vinegar and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Mushroom and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,626 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Italian Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and simmer

  1. Peel and slice the onion.

  2. In a stewpan, combine the onion, minced ham, mushrooms, and stock.

  3. Simmer for 20 to 30 minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the Béchamel sauce and let it boil.

  2. Stir in the sugar, vinegar, lemon juice, and salt.

  3. Strain the sauce and serve.

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 + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Pepper + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Meat + hamtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,095 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + saucetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Stock
Forms the liquid base and carries the flavour of the other ingredients.
Béchamel sauce
Adds body and a creamy texture to the sauce.
Onion
Contributes savoury depth as it softens and flavours the stock.
Ham
Adds salty, meaty savour to the sauce.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances richness.

The step that matters

Adding the Béchamel and boiling. Béchamel is a flour-thickened dairy sauce that can separate, scorch or turn grainy if it is boiled hard or left too long on heat. Keep it at a gentle, controlled boil while stirring so the sauce stays smooth.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, sugar, pepper, mushroom, vinegar, ham, sauce):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, sugar, pepper, mushroom, vinegar, ham, sauce. 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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