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 ↓
Grilled Mushrooms
Ingredients
Directions
The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.
Prepare the mushrooms
Rinse, peel, and trim the mushrooms.
Remove the stalks and place the mushrooms, upside down, on a small baking tin.
Add scraps of butter, pepper, and coarse sea salt to each mushroom.
Pour the gravy or stock over the mushrooms.
Bake and serve
Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for about 8 minutes.
Butter thin slices of gluten bread and heat them.
Place a mushroom on each slice of bread and serve immediately.
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.
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Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together12,525 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).
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Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together13,580 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together85,593 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
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 and soften into a juicy, tender base when baked.
- Butter
- Adds richness and helps the mushrooms brown lightly in the oven.
- Gravy or stock
- Provides moisture and savory flavor that steams the mushrooms as they bake.
“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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