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Sauce

Mushroom Sauce

A creamy sauce made with button mushrooms, lemon juice, butter, flour, nutmeg, and heavy cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Mushroom Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mushrooms

  1. Peel the button mushrooms and place them in a bowl with a little lemon juice.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine the mushrooms, a pinch of coarse sea salt, a piece of butter, and some white pepper.

  2. Stew the mixture gently for 20 minutes.

  3. Roll a piece of butter in flour and add a pinch of grated nutmeg.

  4. Shake the mixture well, then add 4 tablespoons of heavy cream.

  5. Do not boil after adding the cream.

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. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  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. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Button mushrooms
Form the body of the sauce, releasing moisture and flavour as they stew.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and with flour helps thicken the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when combined with butter and cooked mixture.
Heavy cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture to the sauce.

The step that matters

Do not boil after adding the cream. Boiling cream can cause it to separate or curdle and turn grainy, so the sauce should be kept gently warm once the cream is in.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

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