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Mushrooms, Polonaise

Mushrooms sautéed with onion, cream sauce, and topped with breadcrumbs and clarified butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Mushrooms, Polonaise

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the filling

  1. In a small flat saucepan, combine the sliced Cepes and chopped onion.

  2. Cook over medium heat until the moisture is reduced.

  3. Season with salt and red pepper, then add the Cream sauce and mix well.

Bake and serve

  1. Transfer the mixture to a buttered baking dish.

  2. Sprinkle fresh bread crumbs on top and drizzle with clarified butter.

  3. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven until golden.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  4. Cream + saucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Mushroom + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 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

Cepes (mushrooms)
Main ingredient providing earthy flavor and the bulk of the dish's texture.
Cream sauce
Adds richness and moisture, binding the mushrooms into a creamy filling.
Fresh bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden topping as they brown in the oven.
Clarified butter
Adds fat that helps the crumb topping brown evenly and gives a rich flavor.

The step that matters

Reduce the moisture before adding the cream sauce. Mushrooms release a lot of water as they cook. If it is not cooked off first, the cream sauce will be diluted and the filling will be watery rather than thick.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Shallotfits about as well
  3. Spinachfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

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