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Dessert

Mushroom Pie

A savory pie filled with sautéed mushrooms in a creamy sauce, topped with pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Mushroom Pie

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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Clean and slice the mushrooms.

  3. In a pan, melt butter and sauté the mushrooms until tender.

Make the filling

  1. Stir in flour, then gradually add milk to create a sauce.

  2. Season with salt and pepper.

Assemble and bake

  1. Pour the mushroom mixture into a pie crust.

  2. Cover with another layer of pastry, seal edges, and cut slits for steam.

  3. Bake for 25-30 minutes until golden brown.

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

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

  4. Mushroom + milktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,231 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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 main filling and earthy flavor as they soften and release moisture.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and helps sauté the mushrooms and carry flavor.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a sauce that holds the filling together.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, adding creaminess once thickened.
Pastry for pie crust
Encloses the filling and browns in the oven to form the crisp outer shell.

The step that matters

Thicken the sauce before filling the pie. Flour must be stirred in and the milk added gradually so starch can hydrate and thicken evenly without lumps. A thin or lumpy sauce will run out of the pie when baked and leave the filling soggy.

“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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