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Mushrooms for Winter Use

A method of preserving small fresh button mushrooms in butter for winter storage.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and mushroom 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 for Winter Use

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash and wipe the mushrooms to remove grit.

Cook

  1. In a frying pan, melt the butter over medium heat.

  2. Add the cloves, salt, and lemon juice to the butter.

  3. Once hot, add the mushrooms and toss them for a moment.

Jar and store

  1. Transfer the mushrooms to jars and fill the top with an inch or two of butter.

  2. Let the jars cool, then store in a cool place.

  3. Once the butter is firm, add a top layer of salt and cover to keep out dust.

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. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

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

  2. Clove + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Clove + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,663 recipes

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

  4. Lemon + mushroomtop 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

Button mushrooms
Provide the main body of the preserve, releasing moisture and absorbing butter as they cook.
Butter
Carries the flavor and fat that surrounds the mushrooms and seals the jars against air.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and helps keep the mushrooms fresh-tasting.

The step that matters

Toss the mushrooms briefly once the butter is hot. Mushrooms are mostly water. Cooking them only a moment in hot butter helps them keep their texture and avoids steaming them into a soggy mass that spoils sooner.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Plumfits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Applefits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, clove, mushroom. 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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