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Mushroom Stuffing for Fish

A mushroom-based stuffing for fish made with onion, butter, mushrooms, flour, chicken stock, parsley, salt, pepper, lemon juice, and stale bread crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Mushroom Stuffing for Fish

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Fry the chopped onion in butter for 3 minutes.

  2. Add the chopped mushrooms, flour, chicken stock, parsley, salt, pepper, and lemon juice.

  3. Mix thoroughly and add stale bread crumbs to achieve the right consistency.

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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  4. Mushroom + chickentop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,172 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-butyl acetate (fruity, banana).

  5. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Mushrooms
Provide the main bulk and earthy flavour of the stuffing.
Butter
Fat for frying the onion, adding richness and carrying flavour.
Flour
Thickens the chicken stock into a binding base for the stuffing.
Stale bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and give the stuffing body and a firm texture.

The step that matters

Adding the bread crumbs. Crumbs should be added gradually until the mixture holds together. Too little leaves it wet and loose, and too much makes it dry and crumbly, since stale bread soaks up liquid as it sits.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, mushroom, flour, chicken, parsley, pepper, lemon. 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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