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StexLcd Mushrooms

Sautéed mushrooms cooked with butter, salt, pepper, heavy cream, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

StexLcd Mushrooms

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mushrooms

  1. Choose large button or small flap mushrooms before they turn black.

  2. Pick each mushroom separately and check for bad ones.

  3. Rub the good mushrooms with a flannel and coarse sea salt.

  4. Skin the small flap mushrooms and remove the fringe.

Cook

  1. Place the mushrooms in a stew pan with a little salt, butter, and black pepper.

  2. Set the pan on a low heat and shake occasionally.

  3. When tender, add ⅓ cup of heavy cream and a dusting of flour.

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

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

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

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Mushroom + creamtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,500 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

Butter and flour 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

What each ingredient does

Large button mushrooms
Form the main body of the dish and soften into a tender, savoury base.
Small flap mushrooms
Add earthy flavour and tender texture once skinned and cooked gently.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the mushrooms brown lightly in the pan.
Heavy cream
Adds richness and a smooth, thickened sauce when combined with the cooking juices.
Flour
Thickens the cream and juices into a light, cohesive sauce.

The step that matters

Cooking on low heat. Mushrooms are mostly water. Gentle heat lets that liquid release and evaporate slowly so the mushrooms turn tender and concentrate in flavour without scorching. Too much heat can toughen them or burn the butter.

“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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