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Crust with Mushrooms

A bread crust filled with sautéed mushrooms, white sauce, and a lemony egg yolk mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Crust with Mushrooms

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the mushrooms

  1. Separate the stems from the mushroom caps, wash them quickly, and pat them dry.

  2. In a saucepan, melt the butter, add the mushrooms, season with salt, and fry until the moisture evaporates.

  3. Add the white sauce and keep it on low heat.

Prepare the bread

  1. Cut the bottom crust off the loaf of bread and remove the interior crumb.

  2. Grate the exterior crust and butter the inside and outside of the loaf.

  3. Place the loaf on a gridiron to dry in a 300°F (150°C) oven.

  4. Once dry, place the loaf hollow side up on a dish.

Fill and serve

  1. Mix the egg yolks with cream, add butter and lemon juice, then pour the mixture into the bread crust.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  4. Sauce + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Mushroom + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 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

Hot-bed mushrooms
Give the filling its main body and savory flavor once their moisture has cooked off.
Egg yolks
Enrich the filling and help it set into a custard-like texture when heated.
White sauce
Binds the mushrooms into a creamy, cohesive filling.
Butter
Adds richness and flavor, and helps the bread crust brown and crisp.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, keeping the yolk mixture smooth and soft.

The step that matters

Drying the loaf in the oven. The bread must be dried fully so it stays crisp and does not soak up the filling and turn soggy. Low, steady heat dries the crumb-free shell without scorching it.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, butter, sauce, bread, egg, cream. 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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