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Baked Mushrooms

A baked mushroom dish served with a creamy sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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 ↓

Baked Mushrooms

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare and bake

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Prepare the mushrooms as you would for stewing.

  3. Place them in a baking pan and season with salt, pepper, lemon juice, and chopped parsley.

  4. Bake in the oven for 15 minutes, basting with butter halfway through.

Make the sauce

  1. For the sauce, combine cream, butter, chopped parsley, cayenne pepper, salt, white sauce, and lemon juice in a saucepan.

  2. Heat gently, stirring until thickened but do not let it boil.

Serve

  1. Arrange the mushrooms on a dish and pour gravy over them.

  2. Serve the mushrooms on well-buttered toast if desired.

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

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Mushrooms
Form the main body of the dish, releasing moisture and absorbing the buttery sauce as they bake.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, helping the mushrooms brown and carry flavor while basting.
Cream
Makes the sauce smooth and rich, giving it body when gently heated.
White sauce
Thickens the sauce, giving it a creamy body that holds on the mushrooms.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the mushrooms and balances the richness of butter and cream.

The step that matters

Heat the sauce gently without boiling. Cream and white sauce can curdle or separate if they boil, and the starch thickens as it heats gently. Stirring keeps the sauce smooth and evenly thickened.

“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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