Name: Cheese and Mushrooms
Ingredients: ½ lb. cheese; 4 dried or fresh mushrooms; water; olive oil or butter; pepper; coarse sea salt (formerly 'bay salt'); herbs (optional)

Why it works: Mushroom and olive are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,571 recipes. Both carry trans,trans-2,4-nonadienal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Cheese and Mushrooms

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the cheese

Slice the cheese and place it on a deep plate with a little water.
Put the plate in a 400°F (200°C) oven until the cheese melts.

Add the mushrooms

Remove from the oven, pour off the water, and lay the mushrooms flat on top of the cheese.
Drizzle a little olive oil or butter on each mushroom, then place a very thin slice of cheese on each.
Return to the oven for 10 minutes.

Serve

Serve on toast or with bread and butter.

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.

Mushroom + olivetop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,571 recipes

Shared aroma: trans,trans-2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).
Cheese + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,015 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Olive + peppertop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together30,263 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together13,580 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Cheese + olivetop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,802 recipes

Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (apple, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Cheese: Melts into a creamy base and forms a savoury layer that the mushrooms sit on.
Mushrooms: Soften in the oven and add earthy flavour and moisture to the cheese.
Olive oil or butter: Adds fat that carries flavour and helps the mushrooms brown and soften.

“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.