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Stewed Mushrooms

Stewed mushrooms simmered in water, butter, flour, cream, and optional egg, served on toast.

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

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 ↓

Stewed Mushrooms

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the stalks from the mushrooms and peel the top skin with a silver knife.

  2. Place the mushrooms in a saucepan and cover with cold water.

Stew and thicken

  1. Stew gently for 15 to 20 minutes.

  2. Add salt to taste, then stir in the butter rolled in flour.

  3. Boil for 5 minutes, then stir in the cream.

  4. If using, add the beaten egg carefully to avoid curdling.

Serve

  1. Serve the mushrooms on toast.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Mushroom + creamtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,500 recipes

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

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Mushrooms
Form the main body of the dish and release liquid that becomes the sauce as they stew.
Butter and flour
Together they form a roux-style paste that thickens the stewing liquid when stirred in.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture to the thickened mushroom liquid.
Beaten egg
Optional addition that can further enrich and thicken the sauce when added gently.

The step that matters

Adding the beaten egg. Egg proteins set when heated, so if the egg goes into a boiling liquid it can curdle and turn grainy. Adding it carefully, with the liquid off the boil, keeps the sauce smooth.

“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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