Name: Stewed Mushrooms a LA Princesse
Ingredients: 1 cup sauce Allemande; ⅓ cup cream; a pinch of pepper; a pinch of nutmeg; 2 tablespoons butter; juice of 1 lemon; 12 large mushrooms, peeled and washed; 1 tablespoon chopped parsley

Why it works: Lemon and parsley 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 ↓

Stewed Mushrooms a LA Princesse

Oven, in the book's wordsA gentle oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

In a saucepan, combine sauce Allemande, cream, pepper, nutmeg, butter, and lemon juice.
Add the mushrooms and chopped parsley.
Boil for a few moments until heated through.

Serve

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.

Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,037 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Nutmeg + parsleytop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,062 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Sauce allemande: Provides the rich, creamy base that coats and flavors the mushrooms.
Cream: Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture to the sauce.
Butter: Adds fat and richness, rounding out the sauce's flavor.
Lemon juice: Adds acidity that brightens the rich sauce and balances its richness.
Mushrooms: Form the main body of the dish, softening as they cook in the sauce.

The step that matters

Boil for a few moments until heated through. Boiling a cream-based sauce can cause it to separate or thicken unevenly. Keeping the heat brief and monitoring the sauce helps it stay smooth while the mushrooms warm through.

“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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Stewed Mushrooms a LA Princesse