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Mushrooms and Ham

Blanched fresh mushrooms are cooked in a buttered pan with salad oil, then served with sliced grilled ham and watercress.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and watercress work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 983 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Mushrooms and Ham

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a buttered pan, lay the blanched mushrooms and drizzle with salad oil. Season with salt and pepper.

  2. Cover the pan with a plate and cook over low heat until half cooked.

  3. Remove the plate, turn the mushrooms, and cook quickly until done.

  4. Arrange the mushrooms on a serving dish with the sliced grilled ham and garnish with watercress.

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. Pepper + watercresstop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together983 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Mushroom + watercresstop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together99 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Mushroom + hamtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,486 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  5. Pepper + hamtop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,058 recipes

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

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; they release moisture as they cook and then brown in the hot pan.
Salad oil
Carries heat evenly across the pan and keeps the mushrooms from sticking and drying.
Grilled ham
Adds savory, smoky flavor and salt-cured richness to the finished dish.

The step that matters

Covered cooking over low heat, then uncovered cooking. Covering traps steam so the mushrooms cook through gently; removing the cover and turning them lets surface moisture evaporate so they brown rather than stew.

“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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