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Sauce

Mushroom Sauce

A sauce made from mushrooms, veal gravy or milk, butter, flour, pepper, salt, and mushroom juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Mushroom and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,525 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Mushroom Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pick and peel the mushrooms, then wash them clean.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine mushrooms, veal gravy or milk, pepper, salt, and butter mixed with flour.

  2. Stir together and cook over gentle heat until tender.

  3. Skim and strain the sauce.

  4. For added flavor, include the juice of the prepared mushrooms.

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

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

  2. Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Mushroom + vealtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,446 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  5. Mushroom + flourtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,253 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

Mushrooms
Provide the main body and earthy flavor of the sauce.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and carries the flour for thickening.
Flour
Thickens the liquid into a smooth sauce as it cooks.
Veal gravy or milk
Forms the liquid base that the sauce is cooked in.

The step that matters

Cooking the butter and flour into the liquid. Flour needs gentle, steady heat and stirring to hydrate evenly and thicken without lumps or a raw starchy taste. Cooking over gentle heat keeps the sauce from scorching while the starch swells.

“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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