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Potted Mushrooms

Mushrooms are stewed, drained, pressed into small pots, and coated with clarified butter and mutton suet for storage.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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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 ↓

Potted Mushrooms

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mushrooms

  1. Prepare small flaps or buttons of mushrooms, do not wet them, apply salt, and wipe them dry with flannel.

Cook and drain

  1. Stew the mushrooms until tender, using the same amount of butter as in mushrooms au beurre, and increase the spices slightly.

  2. Transfer the cooked mushrooms to a large dish, spread them over one end, and raise the dish 2–3 inches to drain excess butter.

Pot and store

  1. Once cooled, press the mushrooms tightly into small potting-pans.

  2. Pour lukewarm clarified butter thickly over the mushrooms and store them in a cool, dry place.

  3. For immediate use, turn the mushrooms out onto a clean shelf; for longer storage, cover them with dry paper and then with melted mutton suet.

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

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

  2. Mushroom + muttontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together685 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Butter + muttontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,781 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 absorb the butter and spices as they stew.
Butter
Cooks the mushrooms until tender and carries the flavour through the dish.
Clarified butter
Covers the pressed mushrooms, sealing out air to help them keep in storage.

The step that matters

Draining after stewing. Excess butter left on the mushrooms can make the potted dish greasy and encourage spoilage. Raising the dish lets the surplus drain away before the mushrooms are pressed and sealed.

“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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