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Morels, Stewed

A stew of fresh morels cooked with gravy, wine, spices, and thickened with butter and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Morels, Stewed

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean the fresh morels and cut large ones into quarters.

  2. In a pot, combine the morels, gravy, mace, pepper, salt, and white wine.

Stew and thicken

  1. Simmer for one hour.

  2. In a separate bowl, mix butter and flour to create a paste.

  3. Stir the paste into the pot to thicken the gravy.

  4. Add lemon juice to taste and serve hot.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. White wine + buttertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. White wine + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Pepper + white winetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,433 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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 morels
Provide the main earthy flavour and tender texture of the dish.
Butter and flour
Form a paste that thickens the gravy into a smooth, rich sauce.
White wine
Adds acidity and depth to the stewing liquid as it simmers with the morels.
Good gravy
Forms the savoury liquid base that the morels stew in.

The step that matters

Stirring the butter and flour paste into the pot. Flour clumps if added raw to hot liquid. Mixing it first with butter into a smooth paste lets it disperse evenly, so the gravy thickens without lumps.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, white wine, butter, flour, lemon):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, white wine, butter, flour, lemon. 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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