Skip to main content
Main

Stewed Mushrooms

A simple mushroom stew made with butter, flour, salt, pepper, water, and optional milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Stewed Mushrooms

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 ↓

Stewed Mushrooms

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stew

  1. In a bowl, mix the flour with the water to form a smooth paste.

  2. In a stew pan, combine the mushrooms, flour paste, salt, and pepper.

  3. Boil gently for 5 minutes, stirring constantly.

Serve

  1. Serve very hot.

Creamier version

  1. For a creamier version, use ¼ cup water and add 1 cup milk instead, reducing the butter to 1 tablespoon.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Mushrooms
Main ingredient that releases moisture and gives the stew its body and bite.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a smooth sauce when mixed with water first.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a rounder, more savoury flavour.
Milk
Adds richness and a creamier texture in the optional variation.

The step that matters

Stirring while the stew boils gently. Constant stirring keeps the flour paste evenly dispersed, so the sauce thickens smoothly without lumps and the mixture does not stick or scorch on the base of the pan.

“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.

More stewed mushrooms recipes

on Toast 3 See all 138 →

You might also like

Mushroom SoupMushroom Soup60 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes