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Mushrooms and Tomato Toast

A toast topped with sautéed mushrooms and tomato puree, garnished with parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Mushrooms and Tomato Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mushrooms

  1. Wash, peel, and dice the mushrooms.

  2. Heat the butter in a saucepan.

  3. Add the mushrooms and cook gently for 20 minutes.

  4. Season the mushrooms to taste.

Make the tomato puree

  1. Squeeze most of the juice from the tomatoes.

  2. Pass the tomato pulp through a fine sieve.

  3. Heat the tomato puree in a saucepan.

  4. Season the tomato puree to taste.

Assemble and serve

  1. Place the cooked mushrooms on the toast.

  2. Spread the tomato puree over the mushrooms.

  3. Sprinkle chopped parsley over the top.

  4. Serve.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Mushroom + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,719 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

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

  4. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Tomato + parsleytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,398 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Fresh mushrooms
Form the main topping and, cooked gently in butter, release savory flavor and tender texture.
Tomatoes
Provide acidity and fresh flavor, and their pulp adds moisture to the topping.
Butter
Carries the mushrooms' heat and adds richness and browning-related flavor.

The step that matters

Cook the mushrooms gently. Mushrooms hold a lot of water. Cooking them slowly lets that moisture evaporate so they brown and taste concentrated rather than steaming soggy on the toast.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

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