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Sauted Mushrooms

Sautéed mushrooms are cooked in butter, flour, onion juice, and stock or cream, then served on toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Sauted Mushrooms

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mushrooms

  1. Wipe the mushrooms with a damp cloth.

  2. Peel the caps and remove the stems.

  3. Dredge the mushrooms in flour.

  4. Add a drop of onion juice to each cap.

Sauté and finish

  1. Melt the butter in a hot skillet.

  2. Add the mushrooms to the skillet.

  3. Sprinkle with salt and pepper.

  4. Simmer for 10 minutes.

  5. Stir in the parsley and white stock or cream.

  6. Cook for 2 more minutes.

  7. Serve the mushrooms on circles of 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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  5. Mushroom + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Mushrooms
Main ingredient; they soften and release moisture as they simmer in the butter.
Butter
Fat that carries heat to the mushrooms and adds rich flavour and light browning.
Flour
Light dredge that helps the mushrooms brown and lightly thickens the pan juices.
White stock or cream
Liquid that loosens the pan and forms a smooth, savoury sauce around the mushrooms.

The step that matters

Melt the butter in a hot skillet. A hot pan lets the mushrooms sear and brown rather than steam in their own liquid. Adding them to a cool pan would draw out moisture and leave them grey and soggy.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, butter, flour, pepper, parsley, 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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