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Sauce

White Mushroom Sauce

A sauce made from white button mushrooms, bechamel, lemon juice, water, sugar, and butter, simmered and strained.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

White Mushroom Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mushrooms

  1. Clean the mushrooms.

  2. Soak the mushrooms in lemon juice and water to whiten.

  3. Cut the mushrooms into small pieces.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add the mushrooms to the butter.

  3. Cook until the mushrooms are soft.

  4. Stir in the Bechamel sauce.

  5. Simmer for 5 to 6 minutes, ensuring the mushrooms do not lose their color.

  6. Pass the mixture through a fine sieve.

Serve

  1. Reheat the strained sauce in a bain-marie.

  2. Serve the sauce with boiled fowl, turkey, or any white meat.

  3. For a richer sauce, add 1 cup of 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. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

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

  2. Sauce + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Sauce + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Mushroom + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,633 recipes

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

  5. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

Sauce and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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
Provide the main body and earthy flavor of the sauce.
Bechamel or allemande sauce
Adds a smooth, creamy body that thickens the sauce.
Butter
Carries flavor and adds richness and a silky mouthfeel.
Lemon juice
Its acidity helps keep the cut mushrooms pale instead of browning.

The step that matters

Simmer gently without letting the mushrooms darken. Prolonged high heat browns mushrooms and turns the sauce grey or brown, so a gentle simmer keeps the sauce white as intended.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mushroom, sauce, sugar, butter):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Plumfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, sauce, sugar, butter. 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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