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Stewed Cepes

Stewed cepes are cooked with butter, flour, lemon juice, salt, onion juice, pepper, and stock, served as an entree or garnish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Clarke, Mary Lamson. [from old catalog] · From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Stewed Cepes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Free from oil as before and cut into cubes.

Make the stew

  1. Melt the butter and add the cepes and flour.

  2. Stir until a light coffee brown.

  3. Add the stock and seasonings and set back to simmer five minutes.

Serve

  1. If this is to be served as an entree, arrange on toast; but they make a delicious garnish for broiled fish.

By Clarke, Mary Lamson. [from old catalog]. 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.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

  4. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + oniontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32,460 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Butter
Carries flavor and, when cooked with flour, gives the base a nutty brown color.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it cooks with the butter and helps the base brown evenly.
Stock
Provides the liquid that turns the base into a moist, spoonable sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich butter and mushroom flavors.

The step that matters

Stir the butter and flour to a light coffee brown. Cooking the butter and flour together builds nutty flavor and thickening power. Too pale leaves a raw floury taste, and too dark scorches the roux and makes it bitter.

Flavor stand-ins for the lemon

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

  1. Avocadobetter flavor fit
  2. Raisinbetter flavor fit
  3. Coconutbetter flavor fit
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, onion. 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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