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Mushrooms and Eggs

A dish of sautéed mushrooms in stock with butter, onion, herbs, and poached eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 and Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mushroom base

  1. Cook the sliced mushrooms slowly in enough white stock to cover them until tender.

  2. Add butter, chopped onion, herbs, salt, and pepper to taste.

  3. Press the mixture through a sieve and place it on a plate.

Serve

  1. Carefully cover with poached eggs.

  2. Sprinkle with pepper and salt before serving.

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

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

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

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

  5. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Mushrooms
Provide the main body and earthy flavour of the base when cooked down until tender.
White stock
Cooks the mushrooms gently and adds savoury liquid that carries flavour into the base.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel to the pressed mushroom mixture.
Onion
Adds sweetness and aromatic depth to the mushroom base as it softens.
Poached eggs
Add a soft, runny yolk that enriches the mushroom base when cut into.

The step that matters

Pressing the mixture through a sieve. Pushing the cooked mushrooms and onion through a sieve breaks down their fibres into a smooth purée. Skipping or rushing this leaves a coarse texture instead of a silky base.

Swap the onion

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

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

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