Name: Sauce Tournee, or Plain Sauce
Ingredients: 3-4 square pieces of lean ham; 1 good bit of butter; a few small white mushrooms; flour; about 3 tablespoons of good consommé

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 ↓

Sauce Tournee, or Plain Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

In a thick stewpan, melt the butter over moderate heat.
Add the ham and mushrooms, stirring until the butter is clear.
Remove the mushrooms and set them aside.
Mix flour into the butter until it reaches a paste-like consistency.
Gradually stir in the consommé, starting with 3 tablespoons, until well mixed.
Continue adding consommé until the stewpan is nearly full.
Bring to a boil, stirring constantly to prevent burning.
If the sauce is too thick, add more consommé until it reaches a smooth consistency.
Once thickened, strain the sauce through a fine cloth into a basin.

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.

Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together12,525 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Ham + mushroomtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,486 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Ham + buttertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,475 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).
Mushroom + flourtop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,253 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: Forms the fat base that carries flavour and helps the flour form a smooth roux.
Flour: Thickens the sauce when cooked into the butter and then liquid is added.
Consommé: Provides the liquid that the flour thickens into a smooth sauce.
Lean ham: Adds savoury, meaty flavour to the sauce as it cooks in the butter.
White mushrooms: Contribute earthy flavour and aroma to the butter and the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the consommé gradually. Flour mixed with butter forms a roux that clumps if liquid is poured in all at once. Adding consommé slowly and stirring keeps the mixture smooth, and constant stirring while boiling prevents the flour from scorching on the base of the pan.

“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.