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Stewed Mushrooms

Stewed mushrooms are cooked with butter, flour, salt, cayenne pepper, and water until tender.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Landmarks Club · From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Illustration of Stewed MushroomsIllustration

Why it works: Egg and oyster match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and 4,093 recipes mention both. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: egg, milk, wheat, shellfish (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Prepare

  1. Take fresh mushrooms, peel and wash them thoroughly.

  2. Put a piece of butter the size of an egg in a frying pan.

Stew

  1. Throw the mushrooms in and fry for a few minutes.

  2. Add about one tablespoon of flour and brown, a pinch of salt and a small pinch of cayenne pepper.

  3. Add enough water so as not to burn, and let boil until tender.

By Landmarks Club. 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. See the original page.

The picture is an illustration, not a photo of this recipe · Contact us to use it

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Egg + oystertop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together4,093 recipes

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

  2. Butter + oystertop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together8,175 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  3. Flour + parsniptop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together663 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Pepper + parsniptop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,109 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Flour + buttertop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together122,858 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter share little aroma chemistry, yet 122,858 recipes mention both: they likely 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 (in the method)
Form the bulk of the dish and release moisture that helps them soften as they stew.
Flour
Browns in the fat for colour and flavour, then thickens the cooking liquid.
Butter
Provides the fat for frying the mushrooms and carries flavour into the dish.

The step that matters

Browning the flour. Flour must brown gently in the fat until nutty and golden. If it scorches, it turns bitter and dark. Adding water promptly stops the browning and prevents burning.

Flavor stand-ins for the parsnip

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, butter, egg, pepper, oyster, vinegar):

  1. Capsicumbetter flavor fit
  2. Cucumberbetter flavor fit
  3. Shallotbetter flavor fit
  4. Parsnipthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, egg, pepper, oyster, vinegar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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