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Stuffed Mushrooms

Stuffed mushrooms filled with a butter, onion, mushroom, flour, broth, and sherry mixture, topped with breadcrumbs and butter, baked and served with Espagnole sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Stuffed Mushrooms

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the filling

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Select and clean the mushrooms, removing the heads and washing them.

  3. Chop the stalks very fine and squeeze out excess water.

  4. In a saucepan, melt the butter and sauté the chopped onion until soft.

  5. Add the chopped mushrooms and fry until almost dry.

  6. Sprinkle in the flour, mix well, and moisten with broth and sherry.

  7. Season with salt, pepper, nutmeg, and parsley, then stir until thick.

Stuff and bake

  1. Once cool, fill the mushroom heads with the mixture.

  2. Place the stuffed mushrooms in a baking dish, sprinkle with bread crumbs, and top with small pieces of butter.

  3. Bake for about 15 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve on a dish with Espagnole sauce around them and garnish with lemon quarters.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Nutmeg + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

  3. Mushroom + sherrytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,176 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-methylphenol (smoky, clove).

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

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

  5. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Mushrooms
Form the edible cups and, once chopped stalks are cooked down, supply the savoury filling.
Butter
Carries the onion and mushrooms in cooking and enriches the filling, with extra pieces adding richness on top.
Flour
Thickens the moistened mushroom mixture so it holds together inside the caps.
Sherry
Moistens the filling and adds a sharp, aromatic note that balances the mushrooms.
Bread crumbs
Form a topping that browns in the oven and adds a crisp surface.

The step that matters

Fry the chopped mushrooms until almost dry. Mushrooms release a lot of water as they cook. If the filling stays wet, it will not thicken properly with the flour and may make the stuffed caps soggy during baking.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mushroom, butter, flour, sherry, pepper, nutmeg, parsley):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, butter, flour, sherry, pepper, nutmeg, parsley. 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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