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Broiled Mushrooms

Broiled mushrooms with butter, parsley, onions, and port, served hot.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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 ↓

Broiled Mushrooms

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pare the mushrooms, leaving the stalks on and pointed.

  2. Wash them well and let them drain.

Make the butter mixture

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter.

  2. Add the parsley and onions to the melted butter and fry the mixture for 1 minute.

Broil and serve

  1. Arrange the mushrooms in a frying pan.

  2. Pour the butter mixture over the mushrooms and season the mushrooms with pepper and salt.

  3. Broil the mushrooms in the oven until done.

  4. Pour the port wine over the mushrooms just before serving.

  5. Serve very hot.

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

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

  3. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  4. Mushroom + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

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

  5. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Mushrooms
Form the main body of the dish and soften and release their moisture as they broil.
Butter
Carries the flavour and coats the mushrooms, helping them brown and stay moist.
Port or claret
Adds wine flavour and acidity that balances the rich butter.
Onions
Add savoury sweetness and aroma when softened in the butter.

The step that matters

Broil the mushrooms until done. Mushrooms hold a lot of water, so under-cooked ones stay soggy while over-cooked ones shrink and dry out. Watching the surface for browning and softening gives a tender result with concentrated flavour.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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