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Mushrooms a LA Creme

Creamed mushrooms made with fresh mushrooms, stock, butter, cream, and spices, served with fried bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Mushrooms a LA Creme

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mushrooms

  1. Remove stalks and skins from the mushrooms and sprinkle with pepper, salt, and mace.

  2. Heat the stock in a pot, add the mushrooms, bring to a boil, and simmer for 15 minutes.

  3. Remove the mushrooms and keep them warm.

Make the sauce

  1. In the stock, add the butter kneaded with flour and stir until thick over the heat.

  2. Add the cream and stir until nearly boiling.

Serve

  1. Pour the sauce over the mushrooms and serve with fried bread and parsley.

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 + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

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

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

  4. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Mushrooms
Main ingredient, cooked gently in the stock until tender and juicy.
Butter
Enriches the sauce and carries flour so it thickens smoothly.
Flour (in the method)
Thickens the stock into a sauce as it is stirred over heat.
Cream
Adds richness and body, making the sauce smooth and creamy.
Stock
Provides savoury flavour and the liquid base for the sauce.

The step that matters

Stirring the butter and flour into the stock. Flour thickens only when heated in liquid long enough for its starch to swell; adding it kneaded with butter and stirring keeps it from clumping, giving a smooth, thick sauce.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, butter, cream, pepper, parsley, bread. 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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