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Canned Mushrooms

A creamy sauce made with canned mushrooms, butter, flour, cream, and seasonings, served over toast or steak.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and mushroom 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 ↓

Canned Mushrooms

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Open the can and drain the mushrooms.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a porcelain-lined saucepan over medium heat.

  2. Once it boils, whisk in the flour.

  3. Add the cream, salt, pepper, and mushrooms.

  4. Heat thoroughly without boiling.

  5. Remove from heat and stir in the beaten egg yolk.

Serve

  1. Serve on thin slices of buttered toast or pour over broiled beefsteak.

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. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Pepper + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Cream + mushroomtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,500 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Butter
Adds richness and fat, and carries flavor into the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as its starch swells in the hot butter and liquid.
Cream
Provides the body, richness and smooth texture of the sauce.
Mushrooms
Supply the main savory flavor and tender bite of the dish.

The step that matters

Heat thoroughly without boiling. Cream-based sauces can separate, scorch or turn grainy when boiled. Keeping the heat gentle protects the smooth texture, and removing the pan from heat before adding the egg yolk prevents it from scrambling.

“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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