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To Stew Mushrooms

A mushroom stew flavored with anchovy, spices, white wine, butter, flour, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

To Stew Mushrooms

Ingredients

Directions

Stew the mushrooms

  1. Clean the mushrooms as for pickling and wash them.

  2. Place the mushrooms in a saucepan with the anchovy, cloves, nutmeg, mace, whole pepper, and salt.

  3. Stew the mushrooms in their own liquid until tender.

  4. Remove the spices from the mushrooms when ready to serve.

Finish and serve

  1. In a dish, add the mushrooms, white wine, and some of their own liquid, and bring to a boil.

  2. Stir in a bit of butter mixed with flour and add the cream.

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. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Nutmeg + macetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Mushroom + white winetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,765 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity).

  5. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

What each ingredient does

Mushrooms
Form the main body of the stew and release their own liquid as they cook.
Anchovy
Adds a deep savoury flavour that blends into the stew without tasting fishy.
Butter and flour
Mixed together and stirred in, they thicken the stewing liquid into a smooth sauce.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, mellow texture to the finished sauce.
White wine
Adds acidity and brightness that balances the rich, savoury liquid.

The step that matters

Stirring in the butter and flour. Flour added directly to hot liquid clumps. Mixing it first with butter, then stirring it in gradually, lets it disperse and thicken the sauce evenly.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mushroom, anchovy, clove, nutmeg, pepper, white wine, butter):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, anchovy, clove, nutmeg, pepper, white wine, butter. 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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