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Italian Sauce

A buttery mushroom sauce flavored with parsley, lemon, thyme, garlic, and consommé.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Italian Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop parsley, lemon, thyme, and mushrooms very fine.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt butter in a small saucepan.

  2. Add garlic.

  3. Add consommé.

  4. Let it stew until thick.

  5. Remove the garlic.

  6. Mix in butter sauce.

  7. Heat the sauce.

  8. Squeeze in lemon juice before serving.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,973 recipes

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

  4. Thyme + clovetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Parsley + garlictop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,308 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Consommé
Provides the liquid base that reduces and thickens into the sauce.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavour through the sauce.
Mushrooms
Add savoury, earthy depth as they cook into the sauce.

The step that matters

Let it stew until thick. Simmering lets water evaporate and the consommé reduce, concentrating flavour and thickening the sauce. Stopping too early leaves it thin, while overcooking can make it too salty or sticky.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (parsley, lemon, thyme, mushroom, butter, garlic, sauce):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Sagefits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against parsley, lemon, thyme, mushroom, butter, garlic, sauce. 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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