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Fresh Mushroom Cocktail

A chilled appetizer of mushrooms served with tomato ketchup and lettuce on cocktail glasses.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and lettuce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,655 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Fresh Mushroom Cocktail

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mushrooms

  1. Shorten the stems of the mushrooms and peel the caps.

  2. Simmer the mushrooms in boiling water for about 15 minutes, adding a little salt just before removing them from the heat.

  3. Skim out the mushrooms and set them aside to chill. Reserve the cooking liquid and uncooked trimmings for another dish.

Assemble and serve

  1. Place cocktail glasses with 3-4 tablespoons of tomato ketchup in the center of small plates.

  2. On each plate, arrange 5 heart leaves of lettuce, placing a mushroom on each leaf, and drop a mushroom on top of the ketchup.

  3. Serve as an appetizer with 3-4 crackers or tiny sandwiches on a separate plate.

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. Tomato + lettucetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,655 recipes

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

  2. Mushroom + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,719 recipes

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

  3. Tomato + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,013 recipes

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

  4. Mushroom + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

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

  5. Mushroom + lettucetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together292 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Mushrooms
Provide the main body of the cocktail, softened by simmering and served chilled.
Tomato ketchup
Supplies sweetness and acidity to the sauce-like base the mushrooms sit in.

The step that matters

Simmering the mushrooms. Simmering for about 15 minutes cooks the mushrooms through without turning them rubbery or waterlogged, and adding salt near the end seasons them while the liquid is still hot enough to be absorbed.

Swap the lettuce

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mushroom, tomato, ketchup, bread):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Lettucethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, tomato, ketchup, bread. 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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