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Stewed Mushrooms

Stewed mushrooms are cooked gently in cold water, seasoned with pepper and salt, then finished with butter or dripping and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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. Wipe the mushrooms clean with a soft cloth and peel them, starting at the edge and finishing at the top.

  2. Cut off the lower part of the stem and place the mushrooms in a tin or earthen vessel.

Stew and finish

  1. Half cover the mushrooms with cold water and stew gently for 15 minutes, stirring frequently to prevent burning.

  2. Season with pepper and coarse sea salt.

  3. Cut the butter or dripping into small pieces and roll the pieces in flour.

  4. Stir in 1 or more tablespoons of butter or dripping.

  5. Stir for 3 to 4 minutes without letting it boil.

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. 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. Pepper + flourtop 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
Form the main body of the dish and release moisture as they stew.
Butter or dripping
Adds richness and a glossy, silky finish to the cooking liquid.
Flour
Coated onto the fat pieces so they thicken the stewing liquid slightly.

The step that matters

Stir for 3 to 4 minutes without letting it boil. Once the butter and flour are added, boiling can break the emulsion and make the sauce grainy or greasy. Gentle heat lets the flour thicken the liquid smoothly.

“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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