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Puree of Mushrooms

A creamy mushroom puree made with butter, white sauce, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Puree of Mushrooms

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mushrooms

  1. Clean and chop the mushrooms, adding lemon juice to prevent browning.

Cook the puree

  1. In a pan, melt the butter over medium heat and add the chopped mushrooms.

  2. Stir the mushrooms for a few minutes until softened.

  3. Mix in the white sauce and reduce the puree.

  4. Add the rich cream and stir over the heat for about four minutes.

Finish and hold

  1. Rub the mixture through a fine sieve onto a dish.

  2. Transfer to a stewpan until needed.

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. Sauce + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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

White button mushrooms
Form the main body of the puree, supplying flavor and bulk once softened and blended.
Butter
Softens the mushrooms and carries flavor, adding richness to the puree.
White sauce
Thickens the puree and gives it a smooth, cohesive body.
Rich cream
Adds fat and silkiness, giving the puree a smoother, creamier texture.

The step that matters

Adding lemon juice while chopping the mushrooms. Mushrooms darken quickly when cut because enzymes oxidize their surface. Lemon juice's acidity slows this browning, keeping the puree pale.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Coconutfits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Avocadofits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, butter, sauce, 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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