Why it works: Mushroom and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,525 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓
Blanquettes of Cold Meat
Ingredients
Directions
Remove skin from the cold meat and cut it into pieces.
Clean and slice the button mushrooms, then soak them in lemon juice and water.
Drain the mushrooms and toss them in butter and white stock, seasoning to taste.
Pour the hot mushroom mixture over the meat and heat until almost boiling.
Thicken the mixture with cream and decorate the dish with small pieces of toast.
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.
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Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together12,525 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).
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Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together41,516 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Meat + mushroomtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together1,423 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
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Mushroom + lemontop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together4,633 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Mushroom + creamtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together4,500 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
Swap the lemon
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, mushroom, butter, cream):
- Coconutfits better
- Avocadofits better
- Strawberryfits better
- Lemonthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against meat, mushroom, butter, cream. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.
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