Skip to main content
Main

Mushrooms, Provincial

Sautéed mushrooms with sweet oil, garlic, parsley, lemon, and pepper, served on toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parsley and lemon 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, Provincial

Ingredients

Directions

Marinate

  1. Slice the mushrooms and place them in an earthen bowl.

  2. Add 2 tablespoons of sweet oil, salt, pepper, and mashed garlic.

  3. Cover with buttered paper and let macerate in a cool place for 1 hour.

Cook

  1. In an omelet pan, heat 1 tablespoon of sweet oil.

  2. Finely chop the garlic and add it to the warmed oil.

  3. Add the mushrooms and toss over the heat until warmed through.

Serve

  1. Stir in chopped parsley and lemon juice, then serve the mushrooms on toast.

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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  4. Garlic + parsleytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,308 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + clovetop 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
Form the body of the dish, softening and releasing their moisture as they warm.
Sweet oil
Carries flavor and conducts heat in the pan, keeping the mushrooms from sticking.
Garlic
Adds aroma that mellows and sweetens as it cooks gently in the oil.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, earthy flavor of the mushrooms.
Parsley
Adds fresh, green aroma at the end, lifting the richness of the oil.

The step that matters

Adding the garlic to the oil. Garlic turns bitter if it browns in hot oil. Adding it to oil that is only warmed lets it soften and flavor the oil evenly, without scorching.

Swap the clove

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

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

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

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesMushroom SoupMushroom Soup60 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipes