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Mushroom and Tomato Toast

A toast topped with sautéed mushrooms and tomato puree, garnished with parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Mushroom and Tomato Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash, peel, and dice the mushrooms.

Cook

  1. Heat butter in a saucepan, add mushrooms, cook gently for 20 minutes, and season to taste.

  2. Squeeze most of the juice from the tomatoes, pass the pulp through a fine sieve, heat in a saucepan, and season to taste.

Serve

  1. Place the cooked mushrooms on the toast, spread the tomato puree over the top, and sprinkle with 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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Mushroom + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,719 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  5. Tomato + parsleytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,398 recipes

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

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 and savory flavor of the topping as they cook down gently in butter.
Tomatoes
Supply acidity and moisture, forming a sauce-like puree that soaks into the toast.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, helping the mushrooms brown lightly and carry flavor.

The step that matters

Cooking the mushrooms gently. Mushrooms release a lot of water. Cooking them gently over moderate heat lets that moisture evaporate slowly so they soften and concentrate in flavor rather than steam into a soggy topping.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

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