Skip to main content
Main

Mushrooms Au Gratin

A baked mushroom gratin with onion, parsley, thyme, and almond biscuit crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Mushrooms Au Gratin

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.

Prepare the mushrooms

  1. Select 10 cup-sized mushrooms and peel them carefully without breaking.

  2. Cut out the stems close to the cap and scoop out the insides.

  3. Peel the stems and chop them with the scooped-out mushroom flesh.

Make the filling

  1. Add the chopped onion, parsley, and thyme, then fry in a pan with a little butter.

  2. Mix in enough biscuit crumbs to form a moist paste and season to taste.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven until the mushrooms are tender.

  2. Serve with fried parsley around the dish.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Thyme + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,973 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Almond + biscuittop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together388 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  5. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Mushrooms
Form the cups that hold the filling and provide the main body of the gratin.
Almond biscuit crumbs
Absorb moisture and bind the chopped filling into a spreadable paste.
Butter
Fat for frying the onion and herbs, adding richness and flavour.

The step that matters

Peeling the mushrooms without breaking them. The caps must stay whole to hold the filling. Tearing them lets the moist paste leak out and the cups collapse during baking.

Swap the almond

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mushroom, onion, parsley, thyme, pepper, lemon, biscuit):

  1. Lentilsfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Chickpeafits better
  4. Almondthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, onion, parsley, thyme, pepper, lemon, biscuit. 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.

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesAlmond SoupAlmond Soup60 recipesMushroom SoupMushroom Soup60 recipesPotato BiscuitPotato Biscuit32 recipes