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Mushrooms with Gravy

Mushrooms are filled with a thick gravy sauce and baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Mushrooms with Gravy

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.

Prepare

  1. Clean the mushrooms by removing grit and dirt.

  2. Chop the stalks you cut off.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter and stir in the flour.

  2. Add the made gravy and mix well.

  3. Stir in the chopped stalks, parsley, onion, salt, and pepper.

  4. Simmer the sauce until thick and rich.

  5. Add the cream.

  6. Strain the sauce.

Stuff and bake

  1. Butter a silver dish and place the mushrooms head down.

  2. Fill the hollow parts of the mushrooms with the thick sauce.

  3. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for 10 minutes until the mushrooms flatten.

  4. Serve on the same dish wrapped in a napkin.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  5. Mushroom + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Mushrooms
Form the base that holds the sauce and softens into a tender, savoury shell when baked.
Butter
Enriches the sauce with fat and carries flavour through the roux base.
Flour
Thickens the butter and gravy into a smooth, stable sauce through starch gelatinisation.
Made gravy
Provides the main liquid and savoury body of the stuffing sauce.
Cream
Adds richness and a smoother, silkier texture to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Simmer the sauce until thick and rich. The sauce must reduce enough to hold its shape inside the mushrooms. If it stays thin, it will run out during baking and leave the caps soggy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, mushroom, parsley, pepper, cream):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, mushroom, parsley, pepper, cream. 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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