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Mushrooms, Stewed

Stewed mushrooms cooked slowly with butter, lemon, flour, and cream or milk.

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

Mushrooms, Stewed

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the skins and cut off the ends of the stalks from the mushrooms.

Cook the mushrooms

  1. Melt the butter in a stewpan, add the mushrooms and lemon juice, and season with salt and pepper.

  2. Cover closely and cook gently for about 1 hour, shaking the pan occasionally.

Thicken and serve

  1. Mix the flour and cream or milk smoothly together, then pour into the stewpan.

  2. Stir until the mixture boils, then simmer for 10 minutes to cook the flour.

  3. If the mushrooms are tender, season to taste and 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. Lemon + peppertop 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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Button mushrooms
Form the main body of the dish and release moisture as they cook gently.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour while the mushrooms cook.
Cream or milk
Makes the sauce creamy and, with the flour, thickens it into a smooth coating.
Flour
Thickens the cream or milk so the liquid becomes a sauce rather than thin.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the mushroom flavour and balances the cream.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour mixture into the boil. Flour must be fully heated and simmered to lose its raw starchy taste and to thicken properly. Stirring while it comes to the boil prevents lumps and scorching on the base of the pan, so the sauce stays smooth.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, butter, cream, 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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