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Canned Mushrooms in Sauce

A sauce made by sautéing canned mushrooms with butter, flour, mushroom liquor, water, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Canned Mushrooms in Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Drain the mushrooms from their liquid.

Make the sauce

  1. In a small frying pan, melt the butter over medium heat.

  2. Add the mushrooms, season with pepper and salt, and fry until slightly colored.

  3. Push the mushrooms to one side of the pan and add the flour, rubbing it smooth in the hot butter.

  4. Once the flour is slightly browned, gradually pour in the mushroom liquor and a few spoonfuls of water.

  5. Add the mushrooms back to the pan, bring to a boil, and squeeze in the lemon juice.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

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

  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 + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,633 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, 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

Mushrooms
Provide the main body and savory flavor of the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the liquid into a smooth sauce as it cooks in the butter and liquor.
Butter
Carries the frying of the mushrooms and gives the sauce richness.
Mushroom liquor
Adds concentrated mushroom flavor and liquid to the sauce.

The step that matters

Rubbing the flour smooth in the hot butter. Flour added to hot fat must be worked smooth and cooked briefly; otherwise it clumps and tastes raw. Gradually adding liquid then lets the starch swell evenly into a smooth sauce.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mushroom, butter, pepper, flour):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Plumfits about as well
  3. Limefits less well
  4. Cherryfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, butter, pepper, flour. 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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