Name: Broiled Mushrooms on Toast, Maitre D' Hotel
Ingredients: 2 dozen large mushrooms; 2-3 tablespoons sweet oil; coarse sea salt to taste; juice of 1 lemon; butter for greasing; buttered toast; finely chopped parsley; butter for mixing

Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Broiled Mushrooms on Toast, Maitre D' Hotel

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Wash and clean the mushrooms, cut off the stems, and dry them on a napkin.
In an earthen bowl, combine the mushrooms with sweet oil, salt, and lemon juice.
Cover with buttered paper and let macerate for 30 minutes.

Cook and serve

Broil the mushrooms over a gentle fire until cooked.
Serve on hot buttered toast with the mushroom bottoms facing up.
Mix chopped parsley with a little butter and lemon juice, and place on each mushroom.

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.

Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,037 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together12,525 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).
Mushroom + parsleytop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,132 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Mushroom + lemontop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,633 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together28,563 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

What each ingredient does

Mushrooms: Their flesh softens and releases moisture when broiled, becoming tender and savoury.
Sweet oil: Carries heat and seasoning across the mushroom surfaces and helps them brown under the broiler.
Lemon juice: Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the richness of the oil and butter.
Butter: Adds richness and flavour to the toast and the parsley topping.

The step that matters

Broil the mushrooms over a gentle fire until cooked. Mushrooms are mostly water. If the heat is too fierce the surface scorches before the interior softens, while gentle heat lets moisture escape slowly so the caps cook through and brown evenly.

“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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Broiled Mushrooms on Toast, Maitre D' Hotel