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Mushroom Sauce

A creamy mushroom sauce made by stewing mushrooms, adding cream, butter, spices, thickening with flour, and serving over poultry.

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; drain without pressing.

  2. Add the cream or milk, butter, nutmeg, mace, and salt; stew over heat until it thickens.

  3. Mix the flour with cold milk, then add 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

Young mushrooms
Provide the main flavour and body of the sauce as they soften during stewing.
Cream or milk
Adds richness and moisture, giving the sauce a smooth, creamy texture.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a silky mouthfeel in the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it heats, giving it body.

The step that matters

Adding the flour mixture. Flour must be mixed with cold milk first so it disperses without lumps; then bringing the sauce to a boil lets the starch swell and thicken it evenly.

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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