Skip to main content
Main

Mushrooms, Saute of

A sauté of mushrooms cooked with butter, parsley, pepper, and sea salt, served on toast or in an omelet.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Mushrooms, Saute of

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the mushrooms into pieces about 1 inch wide from the stalk to the outer rim.

Cook

  1. In a saucepan, melt a little butter and add the chopped parsley.

  2. Add the mushrooms, season with pepper and coarse sea salt, and fry while shaking the pan until cooked.

Serve

  1. Serve on hot buttered toast or use in an omelet.

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

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

  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 + parsleytop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,132 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

What each ingredient does

Mushrooms
Form the main body of the dish and release moisture as they cook, then brown in the pan.
Butter
Carries heat evenly into the mushrooms and adds richness and browning flavour.

The step that matters

Fry the mushrooms while shaking the pan until cooked. Mushrooms hold a lot of water. If the pan is crowded or too cool, they steam and turn grey and soggy instead of browning. Shaking keeps them moving so moisture evaporates and they colour evenly.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Marjoramfits less well
  4. Sagefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, butter, pepper. 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.

You might also like

Mushroom SoupMushroom Soup60 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes