Why it works: Lemon and pepper 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
Combine butter, flour, mushroom ketchup, lemon juice, and seasonings in a lined pan.
Stir until the flour is smooth, then bring to a boil.
Add the mushrooms to the pan.
Make ½ pint of white stock using the desiccated soup, mushroom liquor, and water.
Add the stock to the saucepan.
Boil for 10 minutes until the sauce is thick and smooth.
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.
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Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together27,047 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
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Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together12,525 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).
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Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together13,580 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Flour + ketchuptop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together2,435 recipes
Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Flour and butter 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
- Flour
- Thickens the sauce as it heats, giving it body and a smooth texture.
- Butter
- Adds fat and richness, and helps the flour cook smoothly into the sauce.
- Button mushrooms
- Provide the main earthy flavour and bulk of the sauce.
- White stock
- Supplies the liquid that the flour thickens into a sauce.
The step that matters
Stir the flour smooth before boiling. Flour added to hot liquid without being stirred smooth clumps into lumps that do not dissolve evenly. Stirring it into the butter and liquid first lets the starch disperse and thicken the sauce evenly.
“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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