Skip to main content
Main

Potted Mushrooms

A dish of stewed mushrooms pressed into small pots, finished with clarified butter and stored with paper and suet.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Mushroom and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,525 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Potted Mushrooms

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare the mushrooms without wetting them, and wipe them dry after applying salt.

Cook and drain

  1. Stew the mushrooms in butter until tender, adding a little extra spice.

  2. Drain the mushrooms in a large dish raised at one end to remove excess butter.

Pot and store

  1. Once cooled, press the mushrooms tightly into small pots.

  2. Pour lukewarm clarified butter over the mushrooms and store in a cool, dry place.

  3. For immediate use, turn the pots onto a clean shelf; for longer storage, cover with dry paper and melted mutton suet.

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

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

  2. Mushroom + muttontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together685 recipes

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

  3. Butter + muttontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,781 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Mushrooms
Form the main body of the potted dish, and their moisture is what the butter must be drained from.
Butter
Cooks the mushrooms until tender and carries flavour, then seals the pots as a protective layer.
Clarified butter
Poured over the pressed mushrooms to seal the surface and limit contact with air.

The step that matters

Draining the mushrooms. Mushrooms release water as they cook, and residual moisture left in the pots can spoil the mushrooms during storage. Draining in a sloped dish lets excess butter and liquid run off before potting.

“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.

You might also like

Mutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesMushroom SoupMushroom Soup60 recipesHaricot MuttonHaricot Mutton59 recipesMutton SoupMutton Soup56 recipes