Name: Mushrooms Cooked in Butter
Ingredients: mushrooms; flour; butter; coarse sea salt; black pepper; cream; grated nutmeg

Why it works: Mushroom and butter 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 ↓

Mushrooms Cooked in Butter

Ingredients

Directions

Wipe the mushrooms clean and dip them in flour.
Heat butter in a saucepan until boiling.
Add the mushrooms, seasoning with coarse sea salt and black pepper.
Shake the pan constantly over the heat.
When the mushrooms are done, add cream to taste and sprinkle with grated nutmeg.

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.

Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together12,525 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).
Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together13,015 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,516 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,623 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, 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

Swap the nutmeg

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

Nutmegthe original
Thymefits about as well
Parsleyfits about as well
Tarragonfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, flour, butter, pepper, cream. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.