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Mushrooms, Au Gratin

A baked dish of mushrooms filled with a savory mixture of shallots, bacon, ham, egg yolks, and topped with breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Shallot and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,476 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Mushrooms, Au Gratin

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 the filling

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

  2. Cut the stalks from the mushrooms, trim the edges, and remove the skin.

  3. In a pan, combine shallots, bacon, ham, salt, pepper, and thyme. Fry the mixture for 5 minutes.

  4. Mix in the egg yolks and fill the mushrooms with this mixture.

Bake and serve

  1. Sprinkle bread crumbs over the filled mushrooms and place them in a buttered pan.

  2. Bake in the oven for about 15 minutes.

  3. Serve in a pyramidal form with brown sauce poured around.

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. Shallot + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,476 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Pepper + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Mushroom + shallottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,982 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Mushroom + thymetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,557 recipes

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

  5. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Bind the filling so it holds together and sets lightly when baked.
Bacon
Adds fat and savory flavor that carries into the filling as it fries.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, browned topping over the filled mushrooms.
Shallots
Add mild sweetness and aromatic depth to the filling when fried.

The step that matters

Mixing in the egg yolks. Egg yolks thicken and set when heated, so the filling should be cooled slightly before mixing in the yolks. Adding them to a very hot mixture can scramble them and leave the filling grainy instead of smooth and cohesive.

Swap the thyme

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mushroom, shallot, ham, pepper, egg, bread, butter):

  1. Parsleyfits about as well
  2. Capersfits about as well
  3. Thymethe original
  4. Tarragonfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, shallot, ham, pepper, egg, bread, 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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