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Stewed Mushrooms

A creamy mushroom stew made with flour, butter, cream, and egg yolk, served with toasted bread slices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Stewed Mushrooms

Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Stewed Mushrooms

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wipe the mushrooms with a wet cloth and place them in a saucepan with a little water.

  2. Stew gently for 15 minutes.

Make the stew

  1. Add a pinch of salt and mix in the flour and butter until thick like cream.

  2. Boil for 5 minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Before serving, mix the cream with the egg yolk and add to the saucepan.

  2. Warm the mixture over low heat for 1 minute, avoiding boiling to prevent curdling.

  3. Arrange slices around the dish 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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Large button mushrooms
Form the main body of the stew and release flavourful juices as they cook.
Flour
Thickens the stew with butter so it becomes creamy and rich.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the flour thicken the liquid smoothly.
Cream
Adds richness and body to the finished stew.
Egg yolk
Enriches and thickens the cream mixture added at the end.

The step that matters

Warming the cream and egg yolk. Egg yolk thickens when heated gently but scrambles and curdles if it boils. Keeping the heat low and avoiding boiling keeps the stew smooth and silky.

“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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