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Another Way to Stew Mushrooms

A mushroom stew made with white stock, butter, flour, and lemon pickle.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon 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 ↓

Another Way to Stew Mushrooms

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a pot, heat the white stock and season with salt, pepper, and lemon pickle.

  2. In a small bowl, mix the butter and flour to form a paste.

  3. Add the paste to the stock to thicken it.

  4. Boil the cleaned and peeled mushrooms in water for 3-4 minutes.

  5. Add the mushrooms to the hot gravy and stew for 15 minutes.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Pepper + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Lemon + mushroomtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,633 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, 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

Butter
Melts with the flour to form a paste that thickens the stock and adds richness.
Flour
Combined with butter, it thickens the stock into a smooth, lightly cooked gravy.
Mushrooms
Add earthy flavour and a tender, meaty texture as they simmer in the gravy.

The step that matters

Add the paste to the stock to thicken it. Flour must be cooked to thicken properly. Whisk the butter-flour paste into the hot stock so it disperses without lumps, then simmer so the starch swells and the raw flour taste cooks off.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Plumfits about as well
  3. Limefits less well
  4. Cherryfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, butter, flour, 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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