Skip to main content
Side

Creamed Mushrooms

A creamy mushroom side dish made with mushrooms, milk, cream, butter, flour, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Creamed Mushrooms

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mushrooms

  1. Stem, wash, and peel the mushrooms.

Make the creamed sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine boiling water and salted milk.

  2. Add the mushrooms and cook gently for 10 minutes.

  3. Mix cream or rich milk with baking soda and add to the saucepan.

  4. Thicken with a roux made from butter and flour.

  5. Season with salt, cayenne, and ground mace.

  6. Simmer for 3 minutes and serve in a deep, covered dish.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  3. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

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

  5. Mushroom + milktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,231 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

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 and earthy flavour of the dish.
Butter and flour
Form a roux that thickens the liquid into a creamy sauce.
Cream or rich milk
Adds richness and fat, giving the sauce a smooth, velvety texture.
Baking soda
Raises the pH of the cream mixture, which can soften the mushrooms and alter the sauce's texture.

The step that matters

Thicken with a roux made from butter and flour. Flour must be cooked with the butter before the liquid is added, so the starch swells smoothly and the sauce thickens without lumps or a raw floury taste.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, milk, cream, butter, flour, pepper. 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.

You might also like

Eggplant CakesEggplant Cakes34 recipesEscalloped Tomatoes (Scalloped Tomatoes)Escalloped Tomatoes (Scalloped Tomatoes)25 recipesParsnip CroquettesParsnip Croquettes12 recipesOnion PuddingOnion Pudding9 recipes