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Stewed Mushrooms

A simple stew of mushrooms and onions cooked in butter, thickened with cornflour and served with rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Stewed Mushrooms

Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Stewed Mushrooms

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel, wash, and dry the mushrooms. If large, quarter them.

  2. Chop the onion finely and fry both the mushrooms and onion in the butter for 10 minutes.

Simmer and thicken

  1. Add the water, milk, and seasoning, and let it all simmer for 20 minutes.

  2. Thicken with the cornflour, bring to a boil, and serve with curried or plain boiled rice.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

  3. Mushroom + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

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

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 dish and release moisture that becomes part of the sauce.
Butter
Fat that carries flavour and helps the mushrooms and onion brown as they fry.
Cornflour
Starch that thickens the liquid into a glossy sauce when heated to a boil.
Milk
Adds creaminess and body to the liquid so the sauce feels rich.

The step that matters

Thicken with the cornflour. Cornflour must be heated to a boil to swell its starch and thicken the sauce. Added too early or not brought fully to a boil, it can stay thin or taste raw-starchy.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Tomatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

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