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Mushroom Tartlets, with Cream

Mushroom tartlets filled with sautéed mushrooms, shallots, and cream, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Shallot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,737 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Mushroom Tartlets, with Cream

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the shells

  1. Butter and flour the tartlet moulds, then line them with a thin layer of puff pastry.

Make the filling

  1. In a frying pan, melt the butter and sauté the shallots until soft.

  2. Add the sliced mushrooms and cook over high heat for a few minutes.

  3. Season with salt, pepper, and parsley, then fill the tartlet moulds with the mixture.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until nearly done.

  2. Beat the egg whites until frothy and mix in the cold cream sauce.

  3. Pour a little of the mixture over each tartlet and return to the oven.

  4. Bake until browned, then remove from the moulds and serve on a napkin.

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. Shallot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

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

  3. Mushroom + shallottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,982 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  5. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Mushrooms
Provide the main savoury filling and moisture that cooks down in the tartlets.
Puff pastry
Forms the flaky, crisp shell that holds the filling.
Egg whites
Beaten and mixed into the cream, they help the topping set and puff lightly when baked.
Reduced cream sauce
Adds richness and moisture, giving the topping a creamy, custard-like body.
Butter
Adds fat and flavour for sautéing the shallots and mushrooms and helps browning.

The step that matters

Bake until nearly done before adding the topping. Partly baking the pastry first sets its structure and keeps it crisp, so the wet egg and cream topping does not soak the base and make it soggy.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mushroom, butter, shallot, pepper, egg, cream, sauce):

  1. Capersfits about as well
  2. Tarragonfits about as well
  3. Parsleythe original
  4. Nutmegfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, butter, shallot, pepper, egg, cream, sauce. 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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