Name: Mushrooms with Cream
Ingredients: Fresh mushrooms (or canned mushrooms); Coarse sea salt; Black pepper; Butter; Slices of toasted bread; Cream

Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Mushrooms with Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mushrooms

Remove the stalks from the mushrooms and peel both the tops and stalks.
Break the mushrooms into small pieces and sprinkle with salt and pepper.
Let the mushrooms sit for about 30 minutes.

Cook and serve

Stew the mushrooms until tender, adding a little butter while cooking.
Pour enough cream over the mushrooms to cover.
Serve the mushrooms on slices of toasted bread with the crusts removed.

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.

Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together12,525 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).
Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,516 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Mushroom + breadtop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,536 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together13,580 recipes

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

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: Adds richness and helps the mushrooms brown slightly as they cook.
Cream: Adds richness and a smooth, creamy texture to the stewed mushrooms.
Toasted bread: Provides a crisp base that soaks up the creamy mushroom sauce.

“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.