Name: Mushroom Sauce for Boiled Turkey or Fowl
Ingredients: 1 pint small mushrooms; 1 blade of mace; ¼ teaspoon salt; ¼ teaspoon grated nutmeg; 2 tablespoons butter (rolled in flour); 1 pint cream

Why it works: Mace and nutmeg 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 for Boiled Turkey or Fowl

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mushrooms

Clean and wash the mushrooms.
Rub them with a flannel.

Make and serve the sauce

In a saucepan, combine mushrooms, mace, salt, nutmeg, butter, and cream.
Stir until the mixture boils.
Pour the sauce around the turkey, fowl, or chicken.

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.

Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,557 recipes

Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).
Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together12,525 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).
Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,516 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,623 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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: Form the body of the sauce and add earthy, savoury flavour as they cook.
Butter: Adds richness and carries flavour, and with the flour coating it helps thicken the sauce.
Cream: Provides moisture and a smooth, rich texture that coats the meat.
Mace: Adds a warm, aromatic spice flavour to the cream.
Nutmeg: Adds a warm, sweet aroma that complements the cream and butter.

The step that matters

Stir until the mixture boils. Cream scorches and can separate when it boils too hard or unattended. Constant stirring spreads the heat evenly and keeps the flour-coated butter from clumping, so the sauce stays smooth and thickens evenly.

Swap the mace

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

Cinnamonfits better
Thymefits better
Marjoramfits better
Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, nutmeg, butter, flour, cream. 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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Mushroom Sauce for Boiled Turkey or Fowl