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Mushroom Sauce

A sauce made from fresh mushrooms, cream, stock, and seasonings, served with beefsteak or poultry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

Mushroom Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mushrooms

  1. Peel and break the mushrooms into small pieces.

  2. Cook the mushrooms in hot water for five minutes.

  3. Drain the mushrooms.

Make the sauce

  1. Make a white sauce using the mushroom liquor and cream.

  2. Add the mushrooms to the white sauce and reheat.

  3. Make a roux with butter and browned flour for a brown sauce.

  4. Stir in brown stock, mushroom liquor, salt, and pepper.

  5. Cook the sauce for ten minutes.

  6. Beat an egg yolk and dilute it with cream.

  7. Add the egg yolk mixture to the sauce.

  8. Add the mushrooms back to the sauce.

  9. Cook for another ten minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve with beefsteak or poultry.

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

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

  3. Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Mushroom + creamtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,500 recipes

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

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

Fresh mushrooms
Provide the main flavour and bulk of the sauce.
Butter
Forms the roux with the flour, adding richness and a smooth base for the sauce.
Browned flour
Thickens the sauce while adding a toasted, deeper colour and flavour.
Brown stock
Adds savoury depth and liquid that the roux thickens into sauce.
Cream
Adds body and richness to the white sauce and moisture to the finished sauce.
Egg yolk
Enriches and thickens the sauce, giving it a smoother, silkier texture.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolk mixture to the sauce. Egg yolk can curdle or scramble if it meets a hot sauce directly. Diluting it with cream first and adding it gradually, off the heat or at low heat, lets it thicken smoothly.

“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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