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Mushrooms Stewed

A stew of fresh mushrooms cooked in water, finished with cream, butter, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Mushrooms Stewed

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak fresh mushrooms in salt water for 1 hour.

Cook

  1. Place mushrooms in a stewpan and cover with water.

  2. Cook gently for 2 hours.

Finish

  1. Dress with cream, butter, and flour, and season to taste.

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. Cream + buttertop 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

Fresh mushrooms
Provide the main body and earthy flavor of the stew.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety texture to the stew.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavor through the finished stew.
Flour
Thickens the liquid so the stew becomes less watery and more cohesive.

The step that matters

Cook gently for 2 hours. Gentle heat keeps the stewing liquid from boiling hard, which would toughen mushrooms and cause the liquid to reduce unevenly. A steady low simmer lets flavors develop slowly and evenly.

“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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