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Stewed Mushrooms

Stewed mushrooms simmered with butter, lemon juice, and spices, thickened with a flour‑milk mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Stewed Mushrooms

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 ↓

Stewed Mushrooms

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Put the can of French mushrooms into a porcelain-lined saucepan and add pepper, salt, lemon juice, and butter.

  2. Cover the pan and let them stew slowly for 10 minutes or until tender.

  3. Mix flour with milk to create a smooth mixture and add it to the mushrooms to thicken to a creamy consistency.

  4. Remove any floating butter particles, add grated nutmeg, and let simmer until done.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

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

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

  5. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

French mushrooms
Form the main body of the dish and release moisture as they stew.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavour through the stewed mushrooms.
Flour
Thickens the milk and juices into a smooth, creamy sauce when heated.
Milk
Combines with flour to form the creamy base of the sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich butter and cream flavours.

The step that matters

Adding the flour and milk mixture. Flour must be fully smoothed into the milk before it goes in, otherwise it clumps. Stirring while the liquid is heating lets the starch swell evenly and thicken the sauce without lumps.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mushroom, pepper, butter, flour, milk, nutmeg):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Coconutfits about as well
  4. Cherryfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, pepper, butter, flour, milk, nutmeg. 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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