Name: Mushrooms with Bacon
Ingredients: 1 lb fresh mushrooms; 1 lb bacon, cut in rashers; pepper, to taste; coarse sea salt, to taste

Why it works: Mushroom and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13,580 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Mushrooms with Bacon

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

1 lb fresh mushrooms
1 lb bacon, cut in rashers
pepper, to taste
coarse sea salt, to taste

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

Peel the mushrooms and sprinkle them with pepper and coarse sea salt.
Place the mushrooms and bacon in a pan.

Cook and serve

Cook in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) for ten minutes.
Serve with mushrooms in the center and bacon arranged around them.
Pour the gravy from the pan over the dish.

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.

Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together13,580 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Fresh mushrooms: Form the main body of the dish and release moisture that helps build the pan gravy.
Bacon: Adds fat and salty, savory flavor that browns and seasons the mushrooms as it cooks.

“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.