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Mushroom Sauce, Very Rich and Good, to Serve with Fowls or Rabbits

A rich mushroom sauce made with fresh mushrooms, cream, butter, flour, and spices, served with poultry or rabbit.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and mace are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,557 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Mushroom Sauce, Very Rich and Good, to Serve with Fowls or Rabbits

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mushrooms

  1. Rub the mushroom buttons with a piece of flannel and salt to remove the skin.

  2. Cut off the stalks and place them in a stewpan with the other ingredients.

Make the sauce

  1. Knead together the butter and flour, then add to the stewpan.

  2. Boil the mixture for about 10 minutes, stirring continuously.

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. Nutmeg + macetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

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

  3. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Nutmeg + flourtop 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

Mushrooms
Provide the main savoury flavour and release liquid that becomes part of the sauce.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky body to the sauce.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and helps carry flavour through the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as its starch swells and sets when boiled.
Mace
Adds a warm, aromatic spice flavour to the sauce.

The step that matters

Boil the mixture while stirring continuously. Flour only thickens fully once it reaches a boil, and constant stirring keeps it dispersed so it does not form lumps or scorch on the base of the pan.

Swap the mace

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

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

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