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Mushroom Powder

A powdered seasoning made from dried mushrooms, used to flavor sauces.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Mushroom and veal are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,446 recipes. Both carry 2,4-nonadienal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Mushroom Powder

Ingredients

Directions

Make the powder

  1. Prepare mushrooms by drying them thoroughly.

  2. Pound dried mushrooms to a fine powder and sift it.

  3. Store the powder in small, dry bottles and seal immediately.

Make the sauce

  1. For sauce, mix 1 teaspoon mushroom powder with ¼ pint veal gravy, ¼ cup cream, and 2 teaspoons flour.

  2. Heat gently to make a bechamel or white sauce.

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 + vealtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,446 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  2. Mushroom + creamtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,500 recipes

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

  3. Mace + vealtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,761 recipes

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

  4. Mace + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,009 recipes
  5. Mushroom + flourtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,253 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Mushrooms
Provide the earthy flavour of the powder, which is the base of the dish.
Veal gravy
Supplies the liquid and savoury body of the sauce.
Cream
Adds richness and smoothness to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it heats, giving it body.

The step that matters

Heat gently to make the sauce. Flour thickens liquid only when heated gently and stirred, since high heat can scorch the sauce or leave it lumpy. Gentle heat lets the starch swell evenly into a smooth white sauce.

Swap the mace

The recipe marks mace as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mushroom, veal, cream, flour):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Turmericfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, veal, cream, flour. 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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