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Mushrooms Au Gratin

Mushrooms au Gratin is a baked dish of mushrooms stuffed with sautéed stems, bacon, tomatoes, cheese, and crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Shallot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,737 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Mushrooms Au Gratin

Oven, in the book's wordsA medium oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a medium oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the filling

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Pick out large open mushrooms, break off the stems, peel, wash, and drain them gill side down.

  3. Wash and chop the stems with a few shallots and a little parsley.

  4. Sauté the chopped stems, shallots, parsley, and a handful of shredded raw bacon.

  5. Add several peeled ripe tomatoes cut into small pieces and simmer for 30 minutes.

  6. Stir in a handful of grated American cheese and enough broken crackers to absorb the moisture.

  7. Season the mixture with coarse sea salt and paprika.

Stuff and bake

  1. Stuff the mushrooms with the mixture, forming a pyramidal shape.

  2. Sprinkle with fresh bread crumbs and bits of butter.

  3. Arrange on a baking sheet and bake until they are a rich brown color.

Serve

  1. Serve on fancy croutons, garnished with rosettes of mashed potatoes.

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. Shallot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

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

  2. Mushroom + shallottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,982 recipes

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

  3. Parsley + potatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,855 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Tomato + potatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,798 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Large open mushrooms
Hollow caps act as edible cups that hold the filling while baking.
Peeled ripe tomatoes
Simmering breaks them down into moisture and acidity that flavour the filling.
Broken crackers
Absorb the liquid from the tomatoes so the filling holds its shape.
Grated american cheese
Melts into the filling and helps form a browned, savoury crust.
Fresh bread crumbs
Form a crisp topping that browns in the oven.
Shredded raw bacon
Renders fat and adds savoury, smoky flavour to the filling.

The step that matters

Simmer the tomato mixture until it is thick enough to hold. Tomatoes release a lot of water. If the filling stays wet, it will not hold its shape in the mushrooms and the caps may turn soggy, so the crackers must absorb the moisture.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mushroom, shallot, parsley, cheese, bread, butter, potato):

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Spinachfits about as well
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, shallot, parsley, cheese, bread, butter, potato. 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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