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Stewed Mushrooms

Stewed mushrooms cooked slowly with butter, flour, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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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

  1. Remove the skins and ends of the mushroom stalks and wash them thoroughly.

  2. Place the mushrooms in a saucepan without additional water, using only what adheres to them.

  3. Season with black pepper, coarse sea salt, and a piece of butter.

  4. Sprinkle a little flour over the mushrooms, stir, and cook slowly over low heat.

  5. Serve hot.

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
Release their own moisture, which forms the cooking liquid that stews them.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavour through the mushrooms as they cook.
Flour
Thickens the released liquid into a light sauce that clings to the mushrooms.

The step that matters

Cook slowly over low heat after adding the flour. Gentle heat lets the mushrooms release and simmer in their own liquid without scorching. Flour added to hot fat or liquid can clump if not stirred, so keep stirring to get a smooth 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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