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Mushroom Forcemeat

A mushroom and egg mixture used as a stuffing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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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 ↓

Mushroom Forcemeat

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean and chop the mushrooms.

  2. Add lemon juice to preserve color before chopping.

Cook and finish

  1. Fry the mushrooms in butter.

  2. Mix in the hard-boiled eggs.

  3. Rub the mixture through a wire sieve while 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.

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 + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,633 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

Egg and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 44,316 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
Provide the main bulk and earthy flavor of the forcemeat.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add body and a firm, slightly crumbly texture to the mixture.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavor as the mushrooms fry.
Lemon juice
Acidity helps keep the mushrooms' color from darkening during preparation.

The step that matters

Rub the mixture through a wire sieve while hot. Pressing the mixture while it is hot lets it pass through the sieve smoothly and produces a fine, even texture. Once it cools, the butter firms up and the mixture becomes harder to force through.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Coconutfits about as well
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Plumfits about as well
  4. Bananafits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, egg, butter. 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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