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Stewed Mussels

A stew of mussels cooked with mace, butter, and flour, served on toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Stewed Mussels

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mussels

  1. Clean the mussel shells thoroughly with repeated washings.

  2. Stew the mussels in boiling water until the shells open.

  3. Remove the mussels from their shells and save the liquor.

  4. Remove the beards from the mussels.

Stew and serve

  1. In a saucepan, combine the mussels, saved liquor, and mace.

  2. Thicken with butter and flour, then let it stew gently for a few minutes.

  3. Serve the stewed mussels on 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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Mace + buttertop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,405 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  3. Mace + flourtop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,974 recipes

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

Mussels
Form the main body of the dish and become tender when gently stewed.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and blends with flour to form a thickening base.
Flour
Thickens the saved liquor into a smooth sauce when cooked with butter.

The step that matters

Thicken with butter and flour, then stew gently. Flour must be cooked with the butter and liquid so its starch swells and thickens evenly. Boiling too hard or leaving it unstirred can cause lumps or a thin, pasty texture.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Jalapenofits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, 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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