Name: To Broil Mushrooms
Ingredients: ½ pound fresh mushrooms; coarse sea salt; brown bread; butter

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 ↓

To Broil Mushrooms

Ingredients

½ pound fresh mushrooms
coarse sea salt
brown bread
butter

Directions

Prepare

Remove the stems from the mushrooms.
Rub the outside of the mushrooms with a flannel dipped in salt.

Broil and serve

Place the mushrooms hollow side up on a grill.
Sprinkle with salt and broil until thoroughly heated.
Serve with brown bread and butter.

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.

Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together12,525 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).
Mushroom + breadtop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,536 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Mushrooms: Form the body of the dish; they soften and release moisture as they heat.
Butter: Adds richness and fat when served alongside the mushrooms and bread.

“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.