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Mushrooms on Toast

A sautéed mushroom mixture served over buttered toast, finished with egg yolk, cream, and herbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Mushrooms on Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mushrooms

  1. Wash, stem, and skin the mushrooms, then cut them into dice.

  2. In a saucepan, combine mushrooms, lemon juice, butter, onion, parsley, and clove tied in a muslin bag.

  3. Set the saucepan over low heat and stew gently until nearly dry.

Make the sauce

  1. Add water to cover the mushrooms, season with salt and pepper, and cook for 15 minutes.

  2. Remove the bag of onion and herbs, then thicken the mixture with a beaten egg yolk and cream.

Serve

  1. Prepare buttered toast on a platter, moisten with hot milk, and pour the mushroom mixture over it.

  2. Garnish with parsley and serve hot.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  4. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Parsley + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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 topping and release moisture that is then cooked down.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour as the mushrooms cook gently in the pan.
Egg yolk
Thickens the mixture as it heats, giving the topping a creamy, spoonable body.
Cream
Adds richness and helps smooth the thickened mixture.
Bread
Provides a crisp, absorbent base that soaks up the mushroom topping.

The step that matters

Thicken with egg yolk and cream. Egg yolk sets when heated, but if the mixture boils it can curdle and turn grainy. Keep the heat gentle and stir while adding the yolk and cream.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, lemon, butter, parsley, clove, pepper, 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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