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Grilled Mushrooms

A dish of grilled mushrooms served on toast with a lemon‑cream sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Grilled Mushrooms

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash and peel the mushrooms, then score the tops with a knife.

  2. Marinate the mushrooms in oil, salt, pepper, and lemon juice for one hour.

Make the sauce

  1. Chop the stalks and broken pieces of mushrooms and stew them in broth for ten minutes with parsley and onion.

  2. Beat the egg yolk with cream and slowly add it to the sauce, stirring until hot but not boiling.

Grill and serve

  1. Place the mushroom tops down on a grill and broil over a clear, slow fire.

  2. Serve the grilled mushrooms on toast, topped with the sauce.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

  4. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  5. Mushroom + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Large mushrooms
Form the main body of the dish, becoming tender and savoury when broiled.
Oil
Carries flavour through the marinade and helps the mushroom surface brown on the grill.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the mushrooms and balances the richness of the sauce.
Egg yolk
Thickens the cream sauce as it gently heats, giving it a smooth, rich body.
Cream
Adds fat and richness, giving the sauce a smooth, mellow texture.

The step that matters

Heating the egg yolk and cream sauce. Egg yolk thickens by gentle heat; if the sauce boils, the yolk can scramble and curdle. Adding it slowly and stirring keeps it smooth.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mushroom, pepper, lemon, parsley, egg, cream):

  1. Spinachfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, pepper, lemon, parsley, egg, cream. 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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