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Another Way to Stew Mushrooms

A dish of mushrooms stewed in a butter and flour base with gravy, seasoned with pepper and sea salt, served with bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Another Way to Stew Mushrooms

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the skin and cut away the stalks from the mushrooms.

Make the sauce

  1. In a pan, brown the butter and flour together.

  2. Add the gravy, seasoned with pepper and coarse sea salt.

Stew and serve

  1. Add the mushrooms and let them stew gently for 45 minutes.

  2. If using a white sauce, follow the same method as with onions.

  3. Serve with slices of bread.

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 + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  3. Mushroom + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, 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

Mushrooms
Main ingredient that softens and releases moisture into the gravy as it stews.
Butter
Fat that carries flavor and, with the flour, forms the base for thickening the sauce.
Flour
Thickener that, browned with butter, gives the sauce body and a nutty flavor.
Gravy
Liquid base of the dish that cooks the mushrooms and forms the sauce.

The step that matters

Browning the butter and flour together. Cooking the flour in fat until it is golden removes raw starchy taste and helps it thicken smoothly. Taking it too far can scorch it and leave a bitter flavor.

“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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