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Mushroom Sauce

A creamy sauce made from young mushrooms, cream or milk, butter, nutmeg, mace, salt, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and mace 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

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Stew the mushrooms in just enough water to cover until tender; then drain without pressing them.

  2. Add the cream or milk, butter, nutmeg, mace, and salt to the mushrooms.

  3. Cook over medium heat until the sauce begins to thicken.

  4. Mix the flour with a little cold milk, add the mixture to the sauce and bring to a boil.

Serve

  1. Serve in a gravy boat or pour over boiled chicken or rabbit.

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

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

  4. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries the flavour of the sauce.
Cream or milk
Supplies liquid and creaminess for the sauce to thicken around.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as its starch swells with heat.

The step that matters

Adding the flour mixture. Flour must be smoothed into cold milk first so it does not clump. Stirring it into hot sauce creates lumps, while bringing the sauce to a boil fully cooks the starch and sets the thickness.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

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