Name: Mushroom Toast
Ingredients: as many mushrooms as needed; butter; pepper; coarse sea salt; bread, ½ inch thick

Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Mushroom Toast

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.

Remove the stalks from the mushrooms, wash, and drain them.
Place the mushrooms hollow side up on a flat dish.
Add a small piece of butter to each mushroom and sprinkle with pepper and salt.
Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for about 15 minutes until tender.
Cut out rounds of bread, 2 inches in diameter, and scoop a little hollow in the center of each.
Fry the bread rounds in boiling fat until golden.
Place a mushroom on each round of toast with a little gravy and serve hot.

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.

Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together12,525 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).
Mushroom + breadtop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,536 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together13,580 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Pepper + breadtop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together20,964 recipes

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