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Mushrooms Stewed in Wine

A stew of fresh mushrooms cooked in wine, served over sliced hard‑boiled eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 in Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash and peel the mushrooms.

Make the stew

  1. Place them in a pot with enough boiling water to cover and cook gently for 5 minutes.

  2. Add the butter and let it melt.

  3. Stir in the red wine, mace, and cayenne, then cover and bring to a boil.

Serve

  1. On a hot platter, arrange the sliced yolks of the hard-boiled eggs.

  2. Pour the mushroom stew over the eggs and garnish with broiled or fried mushrooms.

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. Mushroom + red winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together720 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-methylphenol (smoky, clove).

  3. Butter + red winetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,599 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Red wine + macetop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together381 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, 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 and savory flavor of the stew.
Red wine
Adds acidity and depth of flavor to the mushroom stew.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel to the sauce.
Hard-boiled eggs
Form the base layer under the stew, adding richness and body.

The step that matters

Bringing the stew to a boil after adding the wine. Boiling after the wine is added concentrates flavor and drives off some alcohol, but covering the pot keeps aromatics from escaping. Watch the heat so the wine reduces gently without scorching the butter and mushrooms.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mushroom, butter, red wine, egg):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, butter, red wine, egg. 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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