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To Pot Mushrooms

A method of cooking mushrooms with butter, salt, mace, and pepper, then packing them into a pot and later tossing with gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

To Pot Mushrooms

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mushrooms

  1. Scrape and clean the mushrooms.

  2. In a pan, add the mushrooms, butter, and salt.

  3. Stew over gentle heat until cooked.

  4. Add mace and whole pepper.

Pot and serve

  1. Dry the mushrooms with a cloth and pack them tightly into a pot.

  2. Layer with more salt and mace, then cover with butter.

  3. When ready to use, toss with gravy and thicken with butter and flour.

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

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

  3. Mace + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

  5. Mushroom + macetop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,529 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

Mace and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 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

Large mushrooms
Form the main body of the dish and soften into a tender, savoury filling as they cook.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture while stewing, and seals the top of the pot against air.
Mace
Adds a warm, aromatic flavour that complements the mushrooms.
Flour (in the method)
Thickens the gravy so it coats the mushrooms rather than running thin.

The step that matters

Stew over gentle heat until cooked. Mushrooms release a lot of water as they heat. Gentle heat lets that liquid evaporate slowly and the mushrooms soften evenly, while high heat can scorch the butter and make them tough and dry.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Macethe original

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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