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 ↓
Baked Mushrooms
Ingredients
Directions
The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.
Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).
Cut off nearly all the stalks from the mushrooms and wipe the caps with a wet cloth.
Arrange the mushrooms neatly in a pie dish.
Sprinkle with coarse sea salt, black pepper, and a little mace.
Place a small piece of butter on top of each mushroom.
Bake for about 30 minutes, basting occasionally with butter and water to keep them moist.
Serve in the baking dish with maitre d'hôtel sauce poured over them.
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.
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Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together12,525 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).
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Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together13,580 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Pepper + macetop 16% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together12,257 recipes
Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).
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Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together85,593 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
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Mushroom + macetop 21% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together2,529 recipes
Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
Pepper and mace barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 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
Swap the mace
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mushroom, pepper, butter):
- Thymefits better
- Parsleyfits better
- Marjoramfits better
- Macethe original
Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, pepper, butter. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.
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