Skip to main content
Main

Creamed Mushrooms

A creamy mushroom side served over toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Creamed Mushrooms

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Drain the liquid from the can of mushrooms and set it aside.

  2. Melt the butter in a saucepan over medium heat.

  3. Add the flour and stir to combine.

  4. Gradually add the reserved mushroom liquid and enough cream to create a thin sauce.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the mushrooms and season with salt.

  2. Heat thoroughly and serve over squares of toast.

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

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

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

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Mushroom + creamtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,500 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Mushroom + flourtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,253 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Mushrooms
Provide the main body and savory flavor of the dish.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, helping to carry flavor in the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when cooked with butter, giving it body.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, producing a smooth, thin sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the liquid gradually. Adding the mushroom liquid and cream slowly to the butter and flour mixture lets the starch disperse evenly, preventing lumps and producing a smooth sauce.

“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.

You might also like