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Creamed Mushrooms

Creamed mushrooms served on warm toast.

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 ↓

Creamed Mushrooms

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mushrooms

  1. Peel the mushrooms and place them in ice water.

  2. Cut them into uniform sizes.

Cook

  1. Melt 2 tablespoons of butter in a saucepan, then add the mushrooms and salt. Cover and cook slowly for 30 minutes.

Make the cream sauce and serve

  1. In a bowl, blend 1 tablespoon of butter with 2 tablespoons of flour. Gradually add 1 pint of cream, stirring until smooth.

  2. Add the cooked mushrooms and their liquid to the cream mixture, stirring carefully to avoid breaking the mushrooms.

  3. Serve the creamed mushrooms on slices of warm toast.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Mushroom + creamtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,500 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. 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

Mushrooms
Main ingredient that softens and releases liquid, which becomes part of the creamy sauce.
Butter
Fat that cooks the mushrooms and forms the base of the roux.
Flour
Thickens the cream into a smooth sauce when blended with butter.
Cream
Provides richness and body, forming the smooth sauce that coats the mushrooms.

The step that matters

Blending the flour and butter into the cream. Adding cream gradually while stirring keeps the flour evenly dispersed, preventing lumps and giving a smooth, thickened sauce.

“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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