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Brown Mushroom Sauce

A savory sauce made with mushrooms, stock, cream, flour, butter, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Brown Mushroom Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the roux

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add the flour and stir until it turns dark brown.

Finish the sauce

  1. Gradually add the stock while stirring.

  2. Add the mushrooms and let it simmer for 4 to 5 minutes.

  3. Stir in the cream and bring to a boil, then remove from heat.

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. Flour + buttertop 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).

Flour and butter 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

French mushrooms
Provide the main earthy, savoury flavour of the sauce.
Stock
Forms the liquid base that gives the sauce its body and savoury depth.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture.
Flour
Thickens the sauce and, browned, adds a nutty, toasted flavour.
Butter
Provides fat that carries flavour and combines with the flour to form the roux.

The step that matters

Adding the stock gradually while stirring. Flour starch thickens smoothly only when it is evenly dispersed in liquid. Pouring the stock in slowly while stirring prevents lumps from forming in the roux.

“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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