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Broiled Mushrooms

A simple dish of mushrooms broiled with butter, pepper, salt, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Broiled Mushrooms

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wipe the mushrooms with a flannel cloth and a little coarse sea salt.

  2. Cut off a portion of the stalk and peel the tops.

Broil and serve

  1. Broil the mushrooms over a clear fire, turning them once.

  2. Arrange the mushrooms on a very hot dish.

  3. Place a small piece of butter on each mushroom, season with pepper and coarse sea salt, and squeeze a few drops of lemon juice over them.

  4. Place the dish before the fire until the butter is melted, then serve very 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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

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

  3. Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

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, softening and browning over the direct heat.
Butter
Melts over the hot mushrooms, adding richness and moisture to the cap.
Lemon juice
Adds a bright acidity that balances the richness of the melted butter.

The step that matters

Broil the mushrooms over a clear fire, turning them once. A clear, hot fire sears the surface quickly so the mushrooms brown and keep their juices; a smoky or flaring fire can scorch them before the interior softens. Turning only once limits moisture loss.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Plumfits about as well
  3. Mangofits less well
  4. Cherryfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, pepper, 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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