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Creamed Mushrooms

A creamy mushroom side dish made with sautéed mushrooms, milk, cream, butter, flour, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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

  1. Stem, wash, and peel the mushrooms.

  2. In a saucepan, combine boiling water and salted milk.

  3. Add the mushrooms and cook gently for 10 minutes.

Make the sauce

  1. In a separate bowl, mix cream or rich milk with a bit of baking soda.

  2. In a pan, melt butter and whisk in flour to make a white roux.

  3. Add the cream mixture to the roux and season with salt, cayenne, and mace.

Finish and serve

  1. Simmer everything together for 3 minutes and serve in a deep, covered dish.

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. Milk + buttertop 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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  4. Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

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

  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
Soften as they cook gently, releasing moisture and flavour into the liquid.
Butter
Carries fat that coats the flour and adds richness to the sauce.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the melted butter into a roux that gives the sauce body.
Cream
Adds fat that gives the sauce a smooth, creamy texture.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, adding body and mild sweetness.

The step that matters

Adding the cream mixture to the roux. Add the liquid gradually while whisking so the flour starch disperses without lumps. The sauce thickens as the starch heats in the simmer, so it needs to simmer long enough to lose its raw floury taste.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Macethe original

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