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Stewed Mushrooms

A simple mushroom stew made with butter, stock, lemon juice, flour, and seasonings.

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

Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Stewed Mushrooms

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stew

  1. Rinse and peel the mushrooms.

  2. Melt the butter in a saucepan and add the mushrooms, stirring gently.

  3. Add the stock, pepper, salt, and lemon juice.

  4. Simmer gently for 20 minutes.

  5. Blend the flour with a little cold liquid, then strain it into the saucepan.

  6. Stir gently until it comes to a boil, being careful not to break the mushrooms.

Serve

  1. Serve on a hot dish with triangles of toasted bread around.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

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

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

  5. Mushroom + milktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,231 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

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

What each ingredient does

Mushrooms
Form the main body of the stew and give it its earthy flavour.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour as the mushrooms cook.
Flour
Thickens the liquid so the stew becomes smooth and lightly bodied.
Stock or milk
Forms the liquid base that the flour thickens into a sauce.

The step that matters

Stir gently when bringing to a boil. Vigorous stirring breaks the mushrooms apart and can make the thickened liquid cloudy or grainy. Gentle stirring keeps the pieces intact and the sauce smooth as the starch thickens.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Coconutfits about as well
  4. Plumfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, butter, milk, flour, 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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