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 ↓
Broiled Mushrooms
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Peel the fresh mushrooms and soak them in salted water for a few minutes.
Wipe the mushrooms dry and season with coarse sea salt and black pepper.
Cook and serve
Dip the mushrooms in melted butter.
Broil the mushrooms over a hot fire until cooked.
Serve with crisp 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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Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together13,580 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together85,593 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Fresh mushrooms
- The main ingredient, providing the bulk and savory flavor of the dish.
- Butter
- Fat that carries heat over the surface and helps the mushrooms brown and taste rich.
The step that matters
Wipe the mushrooms dry. Mushrooms soaked in water hold moisture on their surface. If they are not dried before broiling, that water steams the mushrooms instead of letting the surface brown, so the seasoning and butter do less good.
“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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