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Purle of Mushrooms

A thick sauce of chopped mushrooms cooked in butter with bread crumbs and beef gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Mushroom and beef are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,232 recipes. Both carry 2,4-nonadienal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Purle of Mushrooms

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel and chop the mushrooms.

  2. In a skillet, melt the butter over medium heat.

Cook

  1. Add the mushrooms and cook for about 5 minutes.

  2. Season with pepper and coarse sea salt.

  3. Stir in the bread crumbs and beef gravy.

  4. Cook for an additional 5 minutes.

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. Mushroom + beeftop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  2. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  4. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Mushroom + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 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

Mushrooms
Form the bulk of the dish and release moisture and savory flavor as they cook.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, helping the mushrooms brown and carry flavor.
Bread crumbs
Soak up the mushroom liquid and thicken the mixture into a spoonable texture.
Beef gravy
Adds savory, meaty flavor and moisture that binds the mixture together.

The step that matters

Cooking the mushrooms until their liquid evaporates. Mushrooms are mostly water. Cooking them long enough over medium heat lets that liquid evaporate so they brown rather than steam, concentrating their flavor before the crumbs and gravy are added.

“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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