Name: Plain Stewed Mushrooms
Ingredients: 1 pint fresh mushrooms; 1 tablespoon butter; Salt to taste; Pepper to taste; Flour or corn-starch for thickening

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 ↓

Plain Stewed Mushrooms

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mushrooms

Peel the tops of the mushrooms and scrape the stalks, cutting off the earthy ends.
Place the mushrooms in cold water as you peel them.

Cook

Melt the butter over medium heat in a skillet.
Add the mushrooms and sauté until tender.
Season with salt and pepper.
Sprinkle flour or corn-starch to thicken the sauce, if desired.

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.

Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together12,525 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).
Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together13,580 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Mushroom + flourtop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,253 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together50,459 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Fresh mushrooms: Form the main body of the dish and release moisture that becomes the sauce as they cook.
Butter: Adds fat for sautéing, carrying flavor and helping the mushrooms brown lightly.
Flour or corn-starch: Thickens the cooking liquid into a smoother, more clinging sauce.

The step that matters

Sautéing the mushrooms until tender. Mushrooms are mostly water. If the pan is crowded or too cool, they steam in their own liquid rather than browning, leaving them watery and bland. Cooking in a hot pan in a single layer drives off moisture and concentrates flavor.

“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.