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Mushrooms with Gratinated Crusts

Mushrooms cooked with butter, lemon, parsley, and garlic, then baked in bread crusts and topped with cream sauce and meat glaze.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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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 ↓

Mushrooms with Gratinated Crusts

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mushrooms

  1. Remove stems from mushrooms.

  2. Cook mushrooms in a saucepan with butter, lemon juice, water, parsley, garlic, salt, and pepper.

  3. Toss over a brisk fire until well cooked and moisture is reduced.

  4. Remove the parsley faggot and add the cream sauce.

Make the crusts

  1. Prepare crusts by cutting bread into pieces 4 inches long, 2 inches wide, and 1.5 inches thick.

  2. Hollow out the center, leaving ¼ inch thick edges.

  3. Fry the crusts in clarified butter.

  4. Drain the crusts and dry them in the oven.

Assemble and serve

  1. Fill the crusts with the mushroom mixture.

  2. Top each crust with 2 cooked mushrooms, grooved in crescent shape, and moisten with meat glaze.

  3. Serve hot.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Parsley + garlictop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,308 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Mushrooms
Provide the main body of the dish, and cooking drives off moisture so the filling is not watery.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour while the mushrooms cook and the crusts fry.
Cream sauce
Binds the cooked mushrooms into a creamy, moist filling.
Bread
Forms the crisp, hollowed base that holds the filling.
Meat glaze
Adds savoury depth and a glossy finish to the topping.

The step that matters

Toss the mushrooms over a brisk fire until moisture is reduced. If mushrooms stay crowded or under-heated, they release water and steam instead of browning. Reducing that moisture before adding the cream sauce keeps the filling thick rather than soggy inside the crust.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, butter, lemon, parsley, garlic, pepper, cream. 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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