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Mushrooms Stewed

A savory stew of mushrooms flavored with butter, cayenne pepper, salt, nutmeg, lemon juice, and white sauce, served hot with fried croutons.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Mushrooms Stewed

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the mushrooms

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add the mushrooms, cayenne pepper, salt, nutmeg, and lemon juice.

  3. Simmer for a few minutes.

Thicken and serve

  1. Gradually add the white sauce until the mixture thickens.

  2. Serve hot, garnished with fried croutons.

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

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

  2. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  5. Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 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
Form the body of the stew and release moisture and savory flavor as they cook.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and carries flavor while the mushrooms cook.
White sauce
Thickens the liquid into a creamy, spoonable stew.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and balances the richness of butter and cream.

The step that matters

Gradually add the white sauce. Adding the white sauce a little at a time while stirring lets the starch disperse and hydrate evenly, so the stew thickens smoothly without lumps.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Nutmegthe original

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