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Mushrooms , to Stew

A stew of button mushrooms thickened with flour and butter, finished with an egg liaison.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Mushroom and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,525 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Mushrooms , to Stew

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wipe the mushrooms with a wet cloth.

  2. Place them in a saucepan with a little water.

  3. Stew for 15 minutes.

Thicken and finish

  1. Add salt, flour, and butter to thicken the mixture to the consistency of cream.

  2. Boil for 5 minutes.

  3. When serving, add a liaison of one egg.

  4. Arrange slices around the dish, but do not toast them.

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

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

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Mushroom + flourtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,253 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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
Main ingredient that softens during stewing and releases moisture into the sauce.
Flour
Starch that thickens the cooking liquid into a creamy consistency as it heats.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the sauce a smooth, rounded flavour and texture.
Egg
Forms a liaison that further enriches and thickens the sauce when added at serving.

The step that matters

Adding the egg liaison. Egg proteins set when heated, so the liaison can curdle or turn grainy if the sauce is boiling. Add it off the heat or at low heat, and keep stirring.

“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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