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Sauce

Duxelle Purée

A buttery purée of finely chopped mushrooms, ham, shallots, garlic, truffle, and wine, finished with allemande sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Mushroom and shallot are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,982 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Duxelle Purée

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the mushrooms, shallots, parsley, garlic, and truffle.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a stewpan.

  2. Add the ham and chopped ingredients, and stir over the heat for a few minutes.

  3. Moisten with white wine and a little stock.

  4. Season with pepper, salt, nutmeg, and powdered bay leaf.

  5. When well reduced, stir in the allemande sauce, boil again, and serve.

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 + shallottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,982 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Shallot + garlictop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,000 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Mushroom + truffletop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,900 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  4. Shallot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,677 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Mushroom + white winetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,765 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Butter
Melts to form the fat base that cooks the aromatics and carries their flavour.
Mushrooms
Release moisture and savoury flavour that concentrates as the sauce reduces.
Shallots
Provide a mild aromatic sweetness that builds the base of the sauce.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma, and helps lift flavour from the pan as it reduces.
Allemande sauce
Supplies body and a creamy texture to finish the sauce.

The step that matters

When well reduced, stir in the allemande sauce. Reducing concentrates flavour and thickens the liquid, so the sauce must be reduced enough before adding the allemande. Boiling again after adding it keeps the sauce hot and fully combined.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, ham, mushroom, shallot, garlic, truffle, white wine):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, ham, mushroom, shallot, garlic, truffle, white wine. 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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