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Mushrooms Under Glass

Mushrooms Under Glass is a baked mushroom dish served over toast with cream, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Mushroom and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13,580 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Mushrooms Under Glass

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Trim off the stems and carefully pare the caps of the mushrooms.

  2. Arrange a thin slice of toast on each glass or earthen dish.

Assemble and bake

  1. Cover the toast with a few spoonfuls of heavy cream and dust with coarse sea salt and black pepper.

  2. Place as many mushrooms as the toast will hold on top.

  3. Cover with a glass dome and place in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) for 15 to 20 minutes.

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 + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Cream + peppertop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together21,449 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Cream and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 21,449 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 thick mushrooms
Form the main body of the dish, softening and releasing their juices as they bake.
Toast
Provides a absorbent base that soaks up the cream and juices beneath the mushrooms.
Heavy cream
Adds richness and moisture, gently coating the mushrooms and toast as it heats.

The step that matters

Placing the mushrooms on the toast. Mushrooms hold a lot of water, so overcrowding the toast can leave them steaming rather than gently cooking. Arrange them so the cream can surround them evenly.

“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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