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Wild Mushrooms

A simple preparation of wild mushrooms cooked with butter, salt, and lemon juice after soaking in vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Wild Mushrooms

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak mushrooms in a mixture of water and vinegar for 10 minutes to ensure safety.

  2. Remove mushrooms from the water and rinse in cold water.

  3. Peel, turn, or flute the mushrooms.

  4. Wash the mushrooms.

Cook and serve

  1. Cook the mushrooms in a little water with butter, salt, and lemon juice, covered for 5 minutes.

  2. Transfer to an earthen dish lined with buttered paper.

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 + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,633 recipes

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

  3. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Mushroom + vinegartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,070 recipes

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

  5. Vinegar + lemontop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,334 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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, becoming tender and juicy as they cook.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the mushrooms brown lightly and taste savory.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and helps keep the mushrooms pale.

The step that matters

Cook the mushrooms covered in a little water. The lid traps steam so the mushrooms soften in their own moisture, while the small amount of water keeps them from scorching before they are tender.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Plumfits better
  2. Grapefits better
  3. Pineapplefits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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