Name: Broiled Mushrooms
Ingredients: fresh forced mushrooms; fresh butter; pepper; coarse sea salt

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 ↓

Broiled Mushrooms

Ingredients

fresh forced mushrooms
fresh butter
pepper
coarse sea salt

Directions

Clean fresh mushrooms with a knife and wash them thoroughly.
Drain and dry the mushrooms.
Make a case with a sheet of writing paper and rub the inside with fresh butter.
Fill the paper case with the mushrooms and season with pepper and coarse sea salt.
Place the case on a baking plate over low heat and cover with a stewpot lid.
Add some heat on top of the lid and cook until the mushrooms are nearly dry.
Serve the mushrooms very hot.

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.

Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together12,525 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).
Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together13,580 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together85,593 recipes

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