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To Stew Mushrooms

A stew of button mushrooms simmered with salt, peppercorns, butter, flour, and heavy cream, served with bread.

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

To Stew Mushrooms

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Rub the large button mushrooms with coarse sea salt and a bit of flannel.

  2. Cut out any fur and remove the skin from the smaller mushrooms.

  3. Sprinkle the mushrooms with salt and place them in a stewpan with peppercorns.

Stew and serve

  1. Simmer slowly until cooked through.

  2. Add a small amount of butter, flour, and heavy cream, then bring to a boil.

  3. Serve with slices of bread.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Mushroom + buttertop 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. Mushroom + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Button mushrooms
Form the main body of the dish and release moisture as they cook.
Heavy cream
Adds richness and a silky, thickened texture to the stewing liquid.
Butter
Adds fat and flavour to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the cream and butter mixture into a smoother sauce.

The step that matters

Bringing the cream mixture to a boil. Once cream is boiled, it can separate or scorch if heated too hard or left unattended. Gentle heat and stirring keep the flour-thickened sauce smooth and cohesive.

“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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