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Mushrooms Stewed

A mushroom stew made with butter, pepper, salt, consommé, Espagnole sauce, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Mushrooms Stewed

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean and peel the mushrooms.

Make the sauce

  1. In a skillet, melt the butter over medium heat.

  2. Add pepper, salt, and chopped trimmings; toss to prevent sticking.

  3. When the butter begins to fry, add the consomme.

  4. Stew for a few more minutes.

  5. Add the sauce Espagnole.

  6. Let it boil for a short time.

  7. Stir in the butter.

  8. Squeeze in lemon juice.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Mushroom + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,633 recipes

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

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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

Mushroom trimmings
Chopped fine and cooked in the butter, they release concentrated mushroom flavor into the sauce.
Consomme
Adds a savory meat-based liquid that stews the mushrooms and builds the sauce's body.
Sauce espagnole
Provides a rich, thickened brown base that gives the stewed mushrooms depth and body.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavor and giving the sauce a glossy finish.

The step that matters

Let it boil for a short time. Boiling briefly reduces and thickens the liquid, concentrating flavor. Boiling too long can over-reduce the sauce or break the butter, so watch it closely.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Plumfits about as well
  3. Mangofits about as well
  4. Avocadofits less well

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