Skip to main content
Main

Puree of Mushrooms

A smooth mushroom puree made with milk or broth, crumbled roll, butter, pepper, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓

Puree of Mushrooms

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Chop the mushrooms and simmer them in milk or broth for 10 minutes.

  2. Add the crumbled roll and stir over heat until all liquid is absorbed.

  3. Stir in the butter, pepper, and salt, then rub through a wire strainer. If the puree is too stiff, add a little milk or cream while straining.

  4. Return the puree to the stewpan and heat before serving.

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. Milk + buttertop 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 + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

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

  4. Mushroom + milktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,231 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  5. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Mushrooms
Provide the main flavour and the bulk of the puree.
Milk or broth
Softens the mushrooms during simmering and keeps the puree moist.
Roll
Absorbs liquid and thickens the puree to a smooth body.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the finished puree.

The step that matters

Rubbing through the wire strainer. Pushing the cooked mushrooms and crumb through a fine strainer breaks down fibres and removes lumps, which gives the smooth texture a puree needs. Skipping it leaves a coarse, stringy result.

“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

Mushroom SoupMushroom Soup60 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes