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Puree of Mushrooms

A smooth mushroom puree made with butter, lemon juice, and cream sauce, finished with cream and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper 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 ↓

Puree of Mushrooms

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the puree

  1. Wash and clean the mushrooms thoroughly.

  2. In a saucepan, combine the mushrooms, butter, and lemon juice.

  3. Cook over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until the moisture is reduced.

  4. Transfer the mushrooms to a mortar and pound them finely.

  5. Return the pounded mushrooms to the saucepan.

  6. Add the Allemande or cream sauce, season with salt, pepper, and nutmeg, and let it simmer for 15 minutes.

  7. Rub the mixture through a fine sieve into a flat saucepan.

Finish and serve

  1. Reduce the puree with ½ cup of cream.

  2. Before serving, stir in a piece of butter and heat until almost boiling.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + nutmegtop 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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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 earthy flavor of the puree once cooked down and pounded.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel, and helps the mushrooms cook without sticking.
Allemande or cream sauce
Adds body and creaminess, thickening the puree and softening its texture.
Cream
Enriches the puree and helps it reduce to a smooth, velvety consistency.

The step that matters

Reducing the moisture from the mushrooms. Mushrooms release a lot of water. If they are not cooked until the moisture is reduced, the puree will be thin and diluted, and the later cream and sauce will not thicken it properly.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Coconutfits about as well
  3. Limefits less well
  4. Figfits less well

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