Skip to main content
Main

Creamed Mushrooms

Creamed mushrooms are sautéed mushrooms finished with butter, lemon, flour, milk, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Creamed Mushrooms

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mushrooms

  1. Rinse the mushrooms with cold water and dry them with a towel.

  2. Cut the mushrooms in half.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a pan.

  2. Add the onion, salt, and pepper.

  3. When hot, add the mushrooms and cook slowly for 3 minutes, stirring occasionally.

  4. Add the lemon juice and mix well.

  5. Add the flour and cook for 1 minute.

  6. Stir in the milk and cream.

  7. Cook until thick and smooth.

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 + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

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

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

  4. Mushroom + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

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

  5. Mushroom + milktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,231 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

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

What each ingredient does

Mushrooms
Provide the main body and earthy flavor of the dish.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and carries the aroma of the onion.
Flour
Thickens the liquid into a smooth, creamy sauce as it cooks.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, which thickens with the flour.
Heavy cream
Adds richness and body, giving the sauce a silkier texture.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the creamy sauce and balances its richness.

The step that matters

Cook the flour before adding the milk and cream. Cooking the flour in the butter for a minute cooks off its raw taste and lets it thicken evenly. Adding the liquid to raw flour can leave lumps and a pasty flavor, so the sauce should be stirred steadily until thick and smooth.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

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

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesMushroom SoupMushroom Soup60 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipes