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Mushrooms Au Gratin

Mushrooms au Gratin is a baked dish of hollowed mushrooms filled with a seasoned breadcrumb mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Mushrooms Au Gratin

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Peel the mushrooms carefully and scoop out the inside to make them hollow.

  2. Cut the stalks close to the cups, peel them, and chop them with the scooped-out part.

  3. In a frying pan, fry the chopped mixture with a little butter for 1 minute.

  4. Season with salt, pepper, and a dash of grated lemon peel or juice.

  5. Stir in enough fine bread crumbs to make a moist paste.

Bake and serve

  1. Fill the mushroom cups with the mixture, smoothing it into a dome shape.

  2. Dredge fine pale bread crumbs over the filled mushrooms.

  3. Bake in a greased tin until the mushrooms are cooked through, being careful not to break them.

  4. Drain the mushrooms from the fat and place them on a hot dish.

  5. Garnish with fried parsley before serving.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Thyme + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,973 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Mushrooms
Form the hollow cups that hold the filling and cook down to a tender, juicy base.
Bread crumbs
Soak up moisture from the chopped mixture to form a paste and add body to the filling.
Onion
Adds savory sweetness and aroma when softened in butter in the filling.
Butter or oil
Carries flavor during frying and adds richness to the chopped mixture.

The step that matters

Bake until cooked through without breaking the cups. Mushrooms release water as they heat, and overcooking collapses their walls. Gentle baking keeps the cups intact while the filling sets into a moist paste.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mushroom, walnut, parsley, thyme, pepper, lemon, bread):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, walnut, parsley, thyme, pepper, lemon, 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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