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Mushrooms, Powdered

A dried mushroom powder made by removing moisture and grinding the mushrooms.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and mace are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,400 recipes. Both carry methyleugenol, which smells clove, spice. The science ↓

Mushrooms, Powdered

Oven, in the book's wordsA cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the brown end and outer skin from the mushrooms, ensuring they are free from grit and dirt.

  2. Place the mushrooms in a stewpan with the onions, mace, white pepper, and salt.

Cook down

  1. Heat the mixture gradually by the side of the fire to draw out the mushrooms' juice.

  2. Shake the pan over a clear fire until the moisture has evaporated, being careful not to burn the mushrooms.

Dry and store

  1. Dry the mushrooms in a cool oven, checking several times until they are reduced to a fine powder.

  2. Store the powder in dry, corked, and sealed bottles in a dry place.

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. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  2. Mace + white peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,695 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  3. Mushroom + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

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

  4. Mushroom + clovetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,663 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  5. Onion + clovetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,901 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

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

What each ingredient does

Large mushrooms
Provide the main body of the powder once their moisture is driven off.
Onions
Add aromatic flavour to the mushrooms as they cook in the pan.

The step that matters

Shake the pan over a clear fire until the moisture has evaporated. Mushrooms are mostly water, so the moisture must leave slowly and fully before drying. Too much heat scorches the mushrooms, which spoils the flavour of the powder.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, onion, clove, mace. 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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