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Stewed Mushrooms

Stewed mushrooms simmered in butter with salt, cayenne pepper, and mace until tender.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Stewed Mushrooms

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 ↓

Stewed Mushrooms

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the stems from the mushrooms and clean them with a flannel cloth and salt.

  2. Rinse the mushrooms in cold water and dry them on a towel.

Cook

  1. In a thick iron skillet or stewpan, melt the butter over medium heat until it begins to brown.

  2. Add the mushrooms and simmer for 3 to 4 minutes, shaking the pan to prevent sticking.

  3. Season with salt, cayenne pepper, and ground mace.

  4. Let stew for 10 to 15 minutes until tender, then pour into a warm dish and serve immediately.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

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

  3. Pepper + macetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

  5. Mushroom + macetop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,529 recipes

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

Pepper and mace barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 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

Meadow mushroom buttons
Form the main body of the dish, softening into a tender, moist stew as they cook.
Butter
Provides fat for cooking, and browning it adds a nutty aroma and flavour.

The step that matters

Shaking the pan during the first simmer. Mushrooms release moisture and their surfaces can stick to hot metal. Shaking the pan keeps them moving so they do not scorch or stick while the liquid begins to release.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, butter, 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.

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