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Stewed Mushrooms

A simple stew of sliced mushrooms cooked in butter, flour, and stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Stewed Mushrooms

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 ↓

Stewed Mushrooms

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mushrooms

  1. Wash the mushrooms, scrape the stems, slice them, peel the caps and break them into pieces.

Cook the stew

  1. Plunge all the mushrooms into the melted butter and cook for 2 minutes.

  2. Sprinkle with salt and pepper and dredge with flour.

  3. Add the hot water or stock and simmer for 5 minutes before serving.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Mushroom + flourtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,253 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 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
Form the body of the stew and release their juices as they cook.
Melted butter
Carries the heat into the mushrooms and adds richness to the stew.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a smooth, lightly body-rich stew.
Hot water or stock
Adds liquid that the flour thickens and that carries the mushroom flavor.

The step that matters

Dredging with flour before adding liquid. Flour coated evenly over the buttered mushrooms helps prevent lumps when the hot liquid goes in, and it gives the stew its thickened texture. Adding the liquid before the flour has coated the mushrooms can leave clumps.

“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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