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Another Mushroom-Sauce

A creamy mushroom sauce made with butter, cream, egg yolks, and lemon, served over toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Another Mushroom-Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel and wash the mushrooms, then cut them in half.

  2. Place them in a saucepan with salt, mace, and butter.

  3. Stew gently for 30 minutes.

Make the sauce

  1. Add the cream and beaten egg yolks, stirring until it boils.

  2. Squeeze in the lemon juice.

Serve

  1. Serve over a slice of toasted bread dipped in boiling water.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  4. Mushroom + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

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

  5. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Fresh mushrooms
Form the bulk of the sauce and release moisture and savory flavor as they stew.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, helping the mushrooms soften and carry flavor.
Cream
Gives the sauce body, smoothness, and a rich, mellow texture.
Egg yolks
Thicken the cream as they heat and add richness to the sauce.
Lemon
Adds acidity that brightens the rich cream and balances the flavor.

The step that matters

Stirring the egg yolks into the cream. Egg yolks can curdle or scramble if the mixture gets too hot too quickly. Stirring constantly while heating gently lets them thicken the cream smoothly.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mushroom, butter, cream, egg, lemon, bread):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, butter, cream, egg, lemon, bread. 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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