Name: Essence of Fresh Mushrooms
Ingredients: ½ pound fresh mushrooms; 2 tablespoons butter; 1 lemon (juiced); ⅓ cup white broth

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 ↓

Essence of Fresh Mushrooms

Ingredients

½ pound fresh mushrooms
2 tablespoons butter
1 lemon (juiced)
⅓ cup white broth

Directions

Prepare

Wash the mushrooms or trimmings.
In a saucepan, combine the mushrooms, butter, lemon juice, and white broth.

Cook and strain

Cover the pan and cook over medium-high heat for 5 minutes.
Strain the mixture through a cloth to collect the essence.

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).
Mushroom + lemontop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,633 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,227 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Mushrooms: Provide the savory, earthy flavor and the liquid that becomes the essence.
Butter: Adds fat and richness, carrying flavor through the essence.
Lemon juice: Adds acidity that brightens the savory flavors.
White broth: Forms the liquid base that draws flavor out of the mushrooms.