Skip to main content
Main

Mushroom Tart and Gravy

A baked mushroom tart served with a gravy made from mushroom stalks and eschalots.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Mushroom Tart and Gravy

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the mushrooms

  1. Pick, wash and dry the mushrooms.

  2. Remove the stalks and cut the mushrooms into pieces.

Make the tart

  1. Make pastry with the wheatmeal, 3 oz of butter, and a little cold water.

  2. Roll the pastry out and line a large plate with it.

  3. Heap the mushrooms on the pastry.

  4. Dredge the mushrooms with pepper and salt.

  5. Scatter the remaining butter in bits over the mushrooms.

  6. Keep a little of the pastry.

  7. Cut the pastry into thin strips and lay them in a diamond shape across the pie.

  8. Bake the pie for 45 minutes in a moderate oven (350°F / 175°C).

Make the gravy

  1. Fry the stalks and eschalots in ½ oz of butter.

  2. Gently cook them in ¾ pint of water for 30 minutes, adding seasoning and bay leaves.

  3. Strain the sauce.

  4. Return it to the saucepan.

  5. Thicken with cornflour.

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

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

  2. Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Wheatmeal
Forms the pastry that holds the filling and bakes into a crisp base.
Butter
Adds richness and flakiness to the pastry and enriches the mushrooms as they cook.
Mushrooms
Provide the main filling, releasing savoury juices as they bake.
Cornflour
Thickens the strained gravy into a smooth, glossy sauce.
Eschalots
Add a mild onion-like sweetness and depth to the gravy.

The step that matters

Thicken with cornflour. Cornflour must be mixed smooth with a little cold liquid before stirring in, then simmered briefly. Added dry or to a boiling liquid without mixing, it forms lumps and the gravy stays thin or cloudy.

“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

Mushroom SoupMushroom Soup60 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes