Why it works: Bread and butter 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 ↓
Mushrooms Sautes
Ingredients
Directions
Clean and wash the mushrooms in vinegar and water.
Drain them in a cloth and sprinkle with coarse sea salt.
Dredge the mushrooms in flour, then dip them in the beaten egg, and coat with bread crumbs.
Place them in a stewpan with Bechamel sauce seasoned with chopped fennel.
Sprinkle a little fine bread crumb on top and fry in butter until golden brown.
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.
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Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together27,232 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together12,525 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).
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Mushroom + breadtop 10% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together2,536 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Flour + fenneltop 11% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together455 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour and butter 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
Swap the fennel
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mushroom, vinegar, flour, egg, bread, sauce, butter):
- Capersfits better
- Tarragonfits better
- Parsleyfits better
- Fennelthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, vinegar, flour, egg, bread, sauce, butter. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.
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