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Mushroom -toast, or Croute Aux Champignons

A toasted mushroom dish simmered with butter, mace, cayenne, flour, and broth.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Mushroom and beef are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,232 recipes. Both carry 2,4-nonadienal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Mushroom -toast, or Croute Aux Champignons

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mushrooms

  1. Cut the stems closely from the mushrooms and peel them.

  2. Remove the fur from the mushrooms.

Cook

  1. Melt the butter in a well-tinned saucepan over low heat.

  2. Add the mushrooms, mace, and cayenne pepper; stir well.

  3. Let the mixture stew for 10 to 15 minutes, stirring often.

  4. Add the flour and shake the pan until lightly browned.

  5. Gradually pour in the gravy or beef broth.

  6. Let the mushrooms stew softly in the mixture for a couple of minutes.

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 + beeftop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,232 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Pepper + beeftop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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 toast and release moisture that cooks into the sauce.
Butter
Carries the flavour and enriches the mushrooms as they cook gently in the pan.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid and gives light browning to the mixture.
Gravy or beef broth
Supplies the liquid that becomes the savoury sauce around the mushrooms.

The step that matters

Shake in the flour until lightly browned. Flour must cook long enough to lose its raw taste and brown lightly, but not scorch, before the liquid is added. Too little heat or time leaves a floury taste, while too much darkens and bitters it.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, butter, pepper, flour, beef. 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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