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Fried Mushrooms

Fried mushrooms served with a browned flour gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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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 ↓

Fried Mushrooms

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare the mushrooms for stewing.

  2. Heat enough dripping or butter in a frying pan to thinly cover the bottom.

Fry the mushrooms

  1. Add the mushrooms and fry both sides until golden brown.

  2. Transfer the cooked mushrooms to a hot dish and keep warm.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. In the same frying pan, heat ½ cup of stock or gravy.

  2. Stir in 1-2 tablespoons of blended browned flour and keep stirring until it boils.

  3. Season with pepper and coarse sea salt, then pour the gravy over the mushrooms.

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

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Mushroom + flourtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,253 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 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
Main ingredient that softens and browns in the fat, absorbing flavour as it cooks.
Dripping or butter
Fat that conducts heat for frying and adds richness and browning to the mushrooms.
Blended browned flour
Starch that thickens the stock into a smooth gravy as it heats and boils.

The step that matters

Keep stirring the gravy until it boils. Flour added to liquid can clump if left unstirred. Constant stirring disperses the starch so it thickens into a smooth gravy as it heats.

“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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