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Sauce

Italian Sauce

A mushroom and onion sauce made with butter, flour, wine, broth, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Italian Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Melt the butter in a stewpan over medium heat.

  2. Add the chopped mushrooms, onion, and parsley; cook for a few minutes.

  3. Sprinkle in the flour and stir to combine.

  4. Pour in the white wine and consomme; season with salt, pepper, and mace.

  5. Bring to a boil, then skim off any fat.

  6. If desired, add a bunch of sweet herbs while boiling, and remove 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 + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Mushroom + white winetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,765 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity).

  3. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

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

  4. Butter + white winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Enriches the sauce with fat and carries the flavour of the aromatics.
Flour
Thickens the liquid into a smooth sauce as it cooks with the broth.
Mushrooms
Add savoury, earthy flavour that deepens the sauce.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma that brighten the sauce.
Consomme or broth
Forms the main liquid, providing body and savoury flavour.

The step that matters

Adding the flour. Stirring flour into the butter and cooking it briefly lets it dissolve evenly into the liquid. Adding it to hot liquid without this step can leave lumps.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, mushroom, onion, parsley, flour, white wine, pepper):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Garlicfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, mushroom, onion, parsley, flour, white wine, pepper. 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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