Skip to main content
Main

Devilled Mushrooms

Mushrooms stuffed with a seasoned ham and breadcrumb mixture, baked and served on butter‑fried croutons.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Devilled Mushrooms

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the filling

  1. Remove the stalks and peel the mushrooms carefully.

  2. In a pan, fry the onion, chopped mushroom stems, parsley, minced ham, and bread crumbs together.

  3. Season the mixture with salt, pepper, and cayenne, then moisten with vinegar and chutney.

Bake and serve

  1. Fill each mushroom with the forcemeat mixture.

  2. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven for 10 minutes.

  3. Serve each mushroom on a crouton of bread fried in butter.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  4. Ham + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  5. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Mushrooms
Their caps hold the filling and soften slightly as they bake, becoming tender and juicy.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture from the frying mixture, giving the filling a firmer, more cohesive texture.
Ham
Adds savoury, salty flavour to the filling.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, savoury filling.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mushroom, parsley, ham, bread, pepper, vinegar, butter):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Carrotfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, parsley, ham, bread, pepper, vinegar, butter. 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.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipesMushroom SoupMushroom Soup60 recipes