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Native Mushrooms, in Brown Butter

Sautéed mushrooms cooked in browned butter, seasoned with cayenne, black pepper, and salt, served on toast.

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 ↓

Native Mushrooms, in Brown Butter

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel and wash the mushrooms carefully, then dry them slightly.

  2. Heat a large frying pan and melt a little butter in it.

Cook

  1. Place the mushrooms bottom side up in the pan and cover tightly.

  2. Cook slowly until the mushrooms are tender.

  3. Add a large lump of butter to the pan and cook quickly until it begins to brown.

Season and serve

  1. Season with cayenne, black pepper, and salt, then pour over the mushrooms.

  2. Serve the mushrooms on nicely cut pieces of toast.

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

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

  3. 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

Large mushrooms
Main ingredient that softens and releases moisture as it cooks covered.
Butter
Melted first for cooking, then browned to add nutty, toasted flavor.

The step that matters

Browning the butter. Butter browns quickly once its milk solids begin to toast, so it can scorch if left unattended. Watch for a golden color and nutty aroma, then stop the cooking before it turns dark and bitter.

“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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