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To Pot Mushrooms

A dish of button mushrooms cooked with mace, white pepper, cloves, butter, and clarified suet.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Mace and clove are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,400 recipes. Both carry methyleugenol, which smells clove, spice. The science ↓

To Pot Mushrooms

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Choose large button mushrooms and peel them, wiping out any dirt.

  2. In a pot, combine mushrooms with mace, white pepper, and powdered cloves.

Cook

  1. Heat over the fire, shaking occasionally, until the liquid evaporates.

  2. Add butter and stew the mushrooms until tender.

  3. Remove the butter and let the mushrooms cool.

Pot and seal

  1. Pack the mushrooms tightly into a pot, making the surface even.

  2. Add lukewarm butter on top, cover with white paper, and pour clarified suet over it to seal.

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. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

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

  3. Mace + white peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,695 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  4. Mushroom + clovetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,663 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  5. Mushroom + macetop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,529 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

What each ingredient does

Button mushrooms
Form the main body of the dish, softening into a tender, flavorful filling.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture as the mushrooms stew, and seals the top of the pot.
Clarified suet
Forms a fat layer that seals the pot and keeps the mushrooms from drying out.
Mace
Adds warm, aromatic spice flavor to the mushrooms.
Cloves
Adds strong, aromatic spice flavor to the mushrooms.

The step that matters

Heat until the liquid evaporates. Mushrooms release a lot of water as they heat. Cooking off that liquid concentrates their flavor and prevents a watery result, so the mushrooms should be shaken and watched until the liquid is gone.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, mace, clove, 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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