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Mushroom Sauce

A sauce of stewed mushrooms and tomatoes flavored with mace, cayenne, and mushroom catsup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Mushroom and tomato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,719 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Mushroom Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the fur from the mushrooms and leave them whole or quarter them.

  2. Prepare the tomatoes by removing the stalks, halving them, and squeezing out the seeds and watery pulp.

Make the sauce

  1. Stew the mushrooms in rich brown gravy until tender.

  2. Season with mace, cayenne, and salt as needed.

  3. Add 1 tablespoon of mushroom catsup.

  4. Stew the tomatoes with a few spoonfuls of gravy or strong broth until melted.

  5. Press the mixture through a fine sieve and heat it again with additional gravy if too thick.

Serve

  1. Serve hot, adjusting seasoning with salt and cayenne as needed.

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 + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,719 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

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

  3. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Mushroom + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 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

Mushrooms
Provide the main body and earthy flavor of the sauce.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and body, thickening the sauce once pressed through a sieve.
Rich brown gravy
Supplies liquid and savory depth in which the mushrooms stew.
Mushroom catsup
Adds concentrated mushroom flavor and savory depth.

The step that matters

Pressing the tomato mixture through a fine sieve. Removing seeds and watery pulp before pressing keeps the sauce smooth and prevents excess water from thinning it. Straining also removes skins and fibres, so the texture stays silky rather than grainy.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mushroom, mace, pepper, tomato, butter):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits about as well
  3. Carrotfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, mace, pepper, tomato, 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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