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Mushroom Gravy

A savory gravy made with onions, butter, mushrooms, cream, parsley, flour, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and mushroom 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 ↓

Mushroom Gravy

Ingredients

Directions

Make the gravy

  1. Cook the chopped onion in butter in a saucepan until golden yellow.

  2. Add the mushroom peels and cream, stirring well.

  3. Fry the parsley in a separate pan and add it to the mixture.

  4. Thicken the gravy with flour and season with coarse sea salt to taste.

Serve

  1. Serve the mushroom gravy with mashed potatoes.

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. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

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

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Onion + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Mushroom + parsleytop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,132 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Onion
Cooked in butter until golden, it adds sweetness and savory depth to the gravy.
Butter
Carries the onion's flavor and adds richness as the base fat for cooking.
Mushroom peels
Add concentrated earthy mushroom aroma to the cream base.
Cream
Adds fat and body, giving the gravy a smooth, rich texture.
Flour
Thickens the liquid so the gravy coats the potatoes instead of running off.

The step that matters

Thicken the gravy with flour. Flour must be cooked into the fat and liquid, or it stays lumpy or tastes raw. Whisking it in gradually and simmering lets its starch swell evenly, giving a smooth, lightly thickened gravy.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, butter, mushroom, cream, flour):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Capersfits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, butter, mushroom, cream, flour. 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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