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Stewed Mushrooms

A simple mushroom stew cooked with butter, stock, pepper, salt, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Stewed Mushrooms

Why it works: Pepper and lemon 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

Prepare

  1. Prepare the mushrooms by cleaning them thoroughly.

Stew

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan over medium heat.

  2. Add the mushrooms and stir gently to avoid breaking them.

  3. Pour in the stock, then season with pepper, salt, and lemon juice.

  4. Simmer gently for 15 minutes.

  5. Serve on a hot dish.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Mushroom + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,633 recipes

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

  5. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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 dish and absorb the flavour of the butter and stock.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour as the mushrooms cook.
Stock
Provides liquid for gently stewing the mushrooms and adds savoury depth.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the savoury flavour of the mushrooms.

The step that matters

Simmer gently for 15 minutes. Mushrooms are mostly water. Gentle heat lets them release juice and soften while staying intact, whereas a hard boil toughens them and breaks them apart.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Plumfits about as well
  3. Mangofits less well
  4. Cherryfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, 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.

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