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Fricassee of Mushrooms

A stew of mutton and mushrooms finished with egg yolks and cream, served over toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Mushroom and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,626 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Fricassee of Mushrooms

Ingredients

Directions

Stew

  1. Place the mutton slices at the bottom of a stew pan.

  2. Add the mushrooms, salt, pepper, and onion on top.

  3. Stew until the mushrooms are cooked through.

Make the sauce

  1. Remove the mushrooms and strain the liquid from the mutton.

  2. Return the liquid to the mushrooms in a clean stew pan.

  3. Warm the mixture and add the beaten egg yolks and cream.

Serve

  1. Serve over hot toast and sprinkle with cayenne pepper.

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

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

  2. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  3. Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

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

  4. Mutton + mushroomtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together685 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  5. Mushroom + creamtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,500 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton
Releases its juices and flavour into the liquid that becomes the sauce.
Mushrooms
Provide the main body and earthy flavour of the dish.
Egg yolks
Thicken the warm liquid and give the sauce a rich, smooth texture.
Cream
Adds richness and moisture, softening the sauce along with the yolks.
Onion
Adds savoury aroma and sweetness as it stews with the mushrooms.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolks. Egg yolks thicken when heated gently but can scramble or curdle if the mixture boils. Warm the mixture only enough to thicken it, and add the yolks off the heat or over low heat.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, mushroom, pepper, egg, cream):

  1. Spinachfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, mushroom, pepper, egg, cream. 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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