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Mushroom Sauce

A sauce made from butter, flour, hot water, mushroom liquor, salt, pepper, and broiled steak, served with mushrooms.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and mushroom 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 pan

  1. After broiling the steak, remove it to a warming oven.

  2. Drain all grease from the frying pan used for broiling.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in the frying pan and brown slightly.

  2. Mix in the flour and cook for a minute.

  3. Add the hot water and mushroom liquor, cooking until thick and smooth.

  4. Season with salt and pepper.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the broiled steak and mushrooms, letting it boil once.

  2. Serve on a large platter.

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. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + mushroomtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,253 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 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

Butter
Browns slightly in the pan, adding a nutty aroma and richness to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it cooks with the liquid, giving it body and a smooth texture.
Mushroom liquor
Adds earthy mushroom flavor and moisture to the sauce base.
Mushrooms
Add earthy flavor and a tender texture to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Cooking the flour into the butter. Flour must be cooked briefly in the fat before liquid is added. This cooks out the raw starch taste and lets the flour thicken smoothly rather than forming lumps.

“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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