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Mushrooms Au Beurre

Mushrooms sautéed in butter with salt, mace, and cayenne pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Mushrooms Au Beurre

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mushrooms

  1. Cut the stems from the mushrooms and clean them with a bit of flannel and fine salt.

  2. Wipe them dry with a soft cloth or rinse in fresh water, then drain quickly.

  3. Spread the mushrooms in a clean cloth, fold it over, and leave for 10 minutes to dry.

Cook and serve

  1. In a thick iron saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat until it just begins to brown.

  2. Add the mushrooms and shake the saucepan to prevent sticking or burning.

  3. Simmer for 3 to 4 minutes, then add salt, cayenne, and mace.

  4. Continue to stew until the mushrooms are perfectly tender.

  5. Heap the mushrooms in a dish and serve with their own sauce.

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

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

  3. Mace + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

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

Mace and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 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

Meadow mushrooms
Form the main body of the dish, releasing juices that become the sauce as they stew.
Fresh butter
Carries the cooking and browns lightly, adding richness and a nutty flavour to the sauce.
Mace
Adds a warm, aromatic spice flavour that complements the mushrooms and butter.
Cayenne pepper
Adds a gentle background heat that sharpens the buttery flavour.

The step that matters

Stew until perfectly tender. Mushrooms hold a lot of water. Cooking them gently over moderate heat lets that liquid release and reduce into a sauce, while the flesh softens. Too little time leaves them tough, and too much heat can scorch the butter and make them rubbery.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Macethe original

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