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Mushroom Savoury

A baked bread dish with eggs, milk, mushrooms, onions, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Mushroom Savoury

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Crush the toasted bread with your hands and soak it in the milk.

  2. Whip the eggs and add them to the soaked bread.

  3. Peel, wash, and chop the mushrooms.

Make the filling

  1. Fry the mushrooms and onion in the butter for 10 minutes.

  2. Combine the mushroom mixture with the bread and egg mixture, and season with pepper and salt.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a greased pie dish and bake at 350°F (175°C) for 1 hour.

  2. Serve with green vegetables, potatoes, and tomato sauce.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

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

  4. Bread + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

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

  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

Eggs
Bind the soaked bread and mushrooms and set into a firm, sliceable custard as they bake.
Bread
Soaks up the milk and eggs to form the body of the bake.
Milk
Moistens the bread and, with the eggs, gives the bake its custard-like texture.
Butter
Fries the mushrooms and onion, carrying flavour and adding richness.
Mushrooms
Provide the main savoury flavour and moisture in the bake.

The step that matters

Frying the mushrooms and onion. Mushrooms hold a lot of water. Frying them until the liquid has evaporated and they brown concentrates their flavour and keeps the bake from turning soggy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, egg, milk, butter, mushroom, pepper):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, egg, milk, butter, mushroom, pepper. 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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