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Mushrooms a LA Creme

A creamy mushroom sauce made with butter, flour, parsley, egg yolks, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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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 ↓

Mushrooms a LA Creme

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sauce base

  1. Trim and rub the mushrooms clean.

  2. In a stewpan, melt the butter with the flour.

Cook the mushrooms

  1. Add the mushrooms, parsley, salt, white pepper, and powdered sugar.

  2. Shake the pan for 10 minutes over medium heat.

Finish and serve

  1. Beat the egg yolks with the cream and gradually add to the mushrooms.

  2. Cook for 2 to 3 minutes, then serve in the 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. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Mushroom + parsleytop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,132 recipes

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Button mushrooms
Provide the main body of the dish and release moisture that cooks into the sauce.
Butter
Carries flavour and enriches the sauce, while helping the flour cook smoothly.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the butter and cooking liquid into a smooth, creamy sauce.
Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce as they heat and add richness and a silky texture.
Cream
Adds richness and moisture, mellowing the sauce and keeping it smooth when combined with the yolks.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolk and cream mixture. Egg yolks can scramble if they meet too much heat too quickly. Adding the mixture gradually, off the boil, and cooking gently lets the yolks thicken the sauce smoothly.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

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