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To Fricassée Mushrooms

A creamy mushroom dish with onions, butter, flour, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

To Fricassée Mushrooms

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mushrooms

  1. Peel and scrape the inside of the mushrooms.

  2. Soak them in saltwater.

  3. If using button mushrooms, rub them with a flannel.

Cook and finish

  1. Boil the mushrooms in fresh salted water until tender.

  2. Add the onion and toss with butter rolled in flour.

  3. Stir in the cream and nutmeg, then remove the onion and nutmeg before serving.

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. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

  3. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  4. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Mushroom + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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 and absorb the sauce as they cook.
Butter
Enriches the sauce and carries flavour when rolled with flour.
Flour
Thickens the sauce so it clings to the mushrooms.
Thick cream
Adds richness and body to the sauce.

The step that matters

Toss with butter rolled in flour. Coating the mushrooms in a flour and butter mixture before adding liquid helps prevent lumps and gives the sauce a smooth, stable body.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mushroom, clove, cream, nutmeg, butter, flour):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, clove, cream, nutmeg, butter, flour. 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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