Name: Mushrooms Sauted with Thickened Butter and Broiled Mushrooms on Toast
Ingredients: 1 pound mushroom heads; 2 tablespoons clarified butter; Salt to taste; Juice of 1 lemon; ⅓ cup white wine; ¼ cup béchamel sauce; 2 egg yolks; ½ cup cream

Why it works: Mushroom and white wine are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,765 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity. The science ↓

Mushrooms Sauted with Thickened Butter and Broiled Mushrooms on Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Peel the stalks of the mushrooms and cut them into medium-sized pieces.
In a sauté pan, heat the clarified butter over medium heat.
Add the mushrooms, salt, lemon juice, and white wine. Cook until ready to serve.
Stir in the béchamel sauce, thicken with egg yolks, and dilute with cream before serving.

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.

Mushroom + white winetop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,765 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity).
Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together12,525 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).
Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,516 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Butter + white winetop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,083 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
Sauce + creamtop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,787 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

Swap the lemon

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

Strawberryfits about as well
Plumfits about as well
Bananafits about as well
Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, butter, white wine, sauce, egg, cream. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.