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Puree of Mushrooms

A smooth sauce made from blanched mushrooms, butter, white sauce, lemon juice, and a touch of sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Mushroom and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,525 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Puree of Mushrooms

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Blanch the mushrooms in a little water and lemon juice.

  2. Place them in a saucepan with a small amount of butter.

Cook and finish

  1. Cook until the mushrooms are softened, then moisten with a few tablespoons of white sauce.

  2. Do not let it boil for long to preserve the flavor.

  3. Rub the mixture through a fine sieve and add a little sugar.

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

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

  2. Sauce + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

  5. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

Mushrooms
Provide the main body and earthy flavor of the puree.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavor and giving a smooth mouthfeel.
White sauce
Moistens the cooked mushrooms, adding creaminess to the puree.
Lemon juice
Acidity that brightens flavor and helps keep the mushrooms pale during blanching.

The step that matters

Avoid long boiling. Boiling for a long time dulls the delicate flavor of the mushrooms and can make the puree taste cooked and flat. Keeping heat gentle preserves the flavor, as the record advises.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Plumfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

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