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To Pot Mushrooms

A stew of button mushrooms simmered with salt, mace, cloves, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Mace and clove are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,400 recipes. Both carry methyleugenol, which smells clove, spice. The science ↓

To Pot Mushrooms

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the mushrooms in saltwater, then remove and wipe them clean.

  2. Place the mushrooms in a saucepan with salt, mace, and cloves.

Stew

  1. Stew until half the liquid is consumed.

  2. Add the butter and continue to stew until no liquid remains.

Store

  1. Transfer to pots and cover tightly with a bladder when cool.

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. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

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

  3. Mushroom + clovetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,663 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  4. Mushroom + macetop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,529 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  5. Mace + buttertop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,405 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

Mace and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 11,405 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

Button mushrooms
Provide the main body of the stew, releasing liquid that is slowly reduced.
Fresh butter
Adds richness and a silky texture as the liquid cooks down.
Mace
Contributes a warm, aromatic flavour to the mushrooms.
Cloves
Add a warm, pungent aroma that complements the mushrooms.

The step that matters

Stewing until no liquid remains. Mushrooms release a lot of water as they cook. Reducing it fully concentrates their flavour, and stopping too early leaves a watery stew, while overcooking can cause the butter to separate and darken.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, clove, butter. 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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