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Creamed Mushrooms

A creamy mushroom side dish made with butter, onion, flour, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Creamed Mushrooms

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mushrooms

  1. Wash and scald the mushrooms until perfectly white.

  2. Boil the mushrooms in just enough water to cover for about 10 minutes until soft.

  3. Drain and cut the mushrooms in halves or smaller pieces if desired.

Make the creamed mushrooms

  1. In a skillet, melt the butter and fry the chopped onion until golden brown.

  2. Add the mushrooms, flour, milk, salt, and pepper to the skillet. Stir thoroughly and heat well.

  3. Serve hot.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Mushrooms
Form the main body of the dish, becoming soft and tender after boiling.
Butter
Adds richness and carries the flavor of the frying onion.
Onion
Adds savory sweetness and aroma when fried golden in butter.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth, creamy sauce.
Milk
Forms the creamy liquid that the flour thickens into sauce.

The step that matters

Stir thoroughly and heat well after adding the flour and milk. Flour must be fully mixed into the milk and heated so the starch swells and thickens the sauce; otherwise lumps can form and the sauce stays thin or tastes raw.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, butter, flour, milk, 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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