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Dessert

Croustades of Mushrooms

A savory pastry case filled with sautéed onion, mushrooms, anchovies, mustard, and brown sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,259 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Croustades of Mushrooms

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Fry the chopped onion in butter until pale brown.

  2. Add the mushrooms and simmer until they are two-thirds cooked.

  3. Soak the anchovies, then pound them with mustard and brown sauce.

  4. Add the anchovy mixture to the mushrooms and boil for 2-3 minutes.

Assemble

  1. Fill your croustade cases with the mushroom mixture.

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. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

  2. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

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

  3. Onion + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

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

  4. Mustard + saucetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,120 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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

Mushrooms
Provide the bulk of the filling and release moisture that concentrates as they cook.
Butter
Fats that carry the onion's flavour and help it brown gently.
Anchovies
Add a deep savoury, salty note that rounds out the filling.
Brown sauce
Adds savoury depth and colour to the mushroom mixture.
French mustard
Adds sharpness that balances the richness of the butter and anchovy.

The step that matters

Cooking the mushrooms until two-thirds done. Mushrooms release a lot of water as they cook. Stopping at two-thirds keeps them from turning soggy, and the final boil then reduces the liquid so the filling stays thick enough to hold in the cases.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, butter, mushroom, sauce. 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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