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To Cook Mushrooms

A creamy mushroom sauce made with butter, flour, milk, salt, and pepper, served on toast or pastry shells.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

To Cook Mushrooms

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mushrooms

  1. Wash the mushrooms in cold water and skin them if they are large.

  2. Cut each stem across the end and check for worms by following any small holes.

  3. Drain the cleaned mushrooms.

Make the gravy

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat until it bubbles.

  2. Stir in the flour and thin it with the milk.

  3. Season with salt and red pepper.

  4. Once the flour is cooked, add the mushrooms and let them boil for 2-3 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve the mushrooms on toast or in pastry shells.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  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 + milktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,231 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

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

Fresh mushrooms
Provide the main body and earthy flavour of the gravy.
Butter
Adds fat and richness and carries the flavour of the dish.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth gravy once it is cooked.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the flour thickens into gravy.

The step that matters

Cook the flour before adding the mushrooms. Flour mixed into hot butter must cook for a while to lose its raw starchy taste and to thicken properly. Adding the mushrooms too early leaves the gravy pasty and floury.

“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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