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Scalloped Mushrooms

Scalloped mushrooms baked with cracker crumbs, butter, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Scalloped Mushrooms

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

Layer the dish

  1. In a thickly covered baking dish, layer cracker crumbs and mushrooms alternately.

  2. Season each layer with coarse sea salt, black pepper, and a little lemon juice.

  3. Finish with a layer of cracker crumbs on top.

  4. Dot the top with bits of butter.

  5. Pour ½ cup of cream or delicate stock over the layers.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake for 20 minutes and serve very hot.

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 + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

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

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Mushroom + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,633 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
Provide the main filling and their moisture, which softens and flavours the crumbs as they bake.
Cracker crumbs
Form the soft, absorbent layers that soak up cream or stock and hold the dish together.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, helping the top brown and the layers taste rounder.
Cream or delicate stock
Supplies liquid that moistens the crumbs and sets into a tender, saucy body as it bakes.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the mushroom flavour and balances the richness of the butter and cream.

The step that matters

Covering the dish tightly while baking. A thickly covered dish traps steam so the mushrooms cook through and the crumbs soften evenly. Without enough enclosure, liquid evaporates and the top can dry or scorch before the middle is tender.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Coconutfits about as well
  3. Plumfits about as well
  4. Mangofits about as well

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

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