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Mushroom Powder

A powdered seasoning made from dried mushrooms, optionally spiced with mace and cayenne, used in 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

Prepare the powder

  1. Prepare and dry the mushrooms carefully.

  2. Pound the dried mushrooms to a very fine powder.

  3. Sift the powder and immediately transfer it into small, dry bottles.

  4. Cork and seal the bottles without delay to prevent moisture.

Add spices and store

  1. If using spices, bake them in the oven briefly before mixing with the powder.

  2. Store the bottled powder in a very dry place.

Make a sauce

  1. To make a sauce, mix 1 teaspoon of the powder with ½ cup of strong veal gravy, ½ cup of cream, and ¼ teaspoon of flour.

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 concentrated mushroom flavour that the powder carries into the sauce.
Strong veal gravy
Supplies savoury body and depth to the sauce.
Cream
Adds fat and richness, giving the sauce a smoother, silkier texture.
Flour
Thickens the sauce so it holds together rather than running thin.

The step that matters

Cork and seal the bottles without delay. Mushroom powder is hygroscopic, so it absorbs moisture from the air quickly. Any humidity exposure can clump the powder and let it spoil, so it must be sealed right after sifting.

Swap the mace

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

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

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