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Stewed Mushrooms

Stewed mushrooms with butter, pepper, salt, parsley, flour, warm water, egg yolks, cream, served over toasted buttered bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Stewed Mushrooms

Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Stewed Mushrooms

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mushrooms

  1. Drain the mushrooms.

  2. Stew them with butter, pepper, salt, parsley, flour, and warm water.

  3. Add a small onion with the mushrooms to check for poisonous ones; if it turns black, discard all mushrooms.

Finish and serve

  1. When cooked, stir in the egg yolks and cream.

  2. Toast a slice of bread, butter it, and place it on a dish.

  3. Pour the mushroom sauce over the bread.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Mushrooms
Form the main body of the dish and release juices that become the sauce.
Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce when gently heated and give it a rich, smooth texture.
Cream
Adds richness and fat, softening the sauce and giving it a smooth mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a stew-like sauce that clings to the mushrooms.
Butter
Adds fat and flavour while helping the mushrooms brown lightly as they cook.

The step that matters

Stirring in the egg yolks and cream. Egg yolks thicken when heated but can scramble or curdle if the sauce is too hot or boiling. Remove the pan from high heat before stirring them in to keep the sauce smooth.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Tarragonfits about as well

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