Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓
Saute of Mushrooms
Ingredients
Directions
Melt the butter in a chafing dish.
Stir in the flour until smooth.
Add salt, pepper, lemon juice, mushroom ketchup, and boiling water with dissolved fluid beef.
Add the mushrooms and boil until tender.
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.
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Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together27,047 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
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Mushroom + beeftop 4% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together3,232 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).
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Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together12,525 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).
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Pepper + beeftop 10% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together18,971 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
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Pepper + mushroomtop 11% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together13,580 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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 soften into tender pieces as they cook.
- Flour
- Thickens the butter and liquid into a smooth, lightly bound sauce.
- Butter
- Adds richness and carries flavour as the base for the sauce.
- Fluid beef
- Adds a savoury, meaty depth to the boiling liquid.
The step that matters
Stir in the flour until smooth. Flour clumps if added to hot fat without thorough stirring. Stirring it into the melted butter first coats each grain, so it can later thicken the liquid evenly instead of forming lumps.
“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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