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Braised Mushrooms

Mushrooms braised with butter, onion, and cornflour, served with mashed potato border.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,023 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Braised Mushrooms

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mushrooms

  1. Wash and peel the mushrooms, cutting off half the stalk.

  2. In a stew pan, melt 2 oz of butter, add the mushrooms and chopped onion, and cook with the lid on for 20 minutes over low heat.

Make the stock and sauce

  1. In another saucepan, combine the mushroom peels and stalks with water, salt, and pepper, and cook until needed.

  2. Mix the cornflour with a little cold water, add the stock, and pour over the mushrooms.

Serve

  1. Cook the potatoes, mash them, and mix in ½ oz of butter.

  2. Form a border with the mashed potatoes on a serving dish, place the mushrooms in the center, and serve hot.

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. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

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

  3. Pepper + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Mushroom + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together968 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Mushroom + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Mushrooms
Provide the main body of the dish and release moisture and flavour as they cook in butter.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour while the mushrooms and onion cook gently.
Cornflour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a smooth sauce that coats the mushrooms.
Potatoes
Form a soft mashed border that holds the mushrooms and soaks up the sauce.

The step that matters

Cooking the mushrooms with the lid on over low heat. Gentle covered cooking lets the mushrooms soften and release their own liquid, which then braises them. High heat or an open pan would drive off moisture and brown them before they become tender.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Spinachfits about as well
  3. Asparagusfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, butter, pepper, potato. 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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