Name: Mushrooms Farcies
Ingredients: 6 mushrooms; 1 tablespoon chopped ham; 1 teaspoon chopped shallot; 1 teaspoon chopped parsley; 2 tablespoons butter; Pepper to taste; Salt to taste

Why it works: Shallot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,737 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Mushrooms Farcies

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).
Peel and trim the mushrooms, then chop the trimmings.

Make the filling

In a saucepan, cook the chopped trimmings with butter, shallot, parsley, and ham for a few minutes.

Bake and serve

Place the mixture on top of each mushroom and arrange them on a baking tin.
Bake for 8 minutes.
Serve on a small buttered slice of gluten bread, very hot.

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.

Shallot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,737 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Mushroom + shallottop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,982 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together12,525 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).
Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together13,580 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 base that holds the filling and softens as it bakes.
Butter: Adds richness and carries the flavour of the filling as it cooks.
Ham: Adds savoury, salty flavour to the filling.
Shallot: Adds a mild onion-like aroma and sweetness when cooked in butter.

Swap the shallot

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

Shallotthe original
Carrotfits about as well
Capsicumfits less well
Potatofits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, ham, parsley, butter, 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.