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Baked Mushrooms

A dish of mushrooms baked with butter, seasoning, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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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 ↓

Baked Mushrooms

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Pick and skin the mushrooms.

  2. Wash thoroughly and dry carefully.

Season and bake

  1. Place a piece of butter on top of each mushroom.

  2. Sprinkle with seasoning and a little lemon juice.

  3. Place on a buttered baking sheet and cover with buttered paper.

  4. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven until tender.

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. Mushroom + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,633 recipes

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

  3. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Mushrooms
Form the dish's main body and soften into a tender, savoury base as they bake.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, coating the mushrooms as it melts during baking.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the mushrooms and butter.

The step that matters

Drying the mushrooms carefully. Excess surface water steams the mushrooms instead of letting them concentrate in flavour, and it can dilute the butter and seasoning. Drying well before baking helps them roast gently and keep their savoury taste.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Coconutfits better
  2. Plumfits better
  3. Peachfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, butter. 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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