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Mushrooms Au Gratin

Mushrooms au gratin is a baked mushroom dish topped with a butter, breadcrumb, and parsley mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley 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 ↓

Mushrooms Au Gratin

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the mushrooms

  1. Wash the mushrooms thoroughly and drain in a sieve for 30 minutes.

  2. Wipe the mushrooms dry, peel them, and trim the edges neatly.

  3. Remove the stalks and chop the peel and stalks finely.

Make the filling

  1. In a saucepan, combine the chopped peel and stalks with butter, bread crumbs, pepper, salt, and chopped parsley.

  2. Heat the mixture on the stove, stirring well until hot, then let it cool on a plate.

Bake and serve

  1. Top each mushroom with the mixture, ensuring it is piled high.

  2. Coat the mushrooms with egg and breadcrumbs.

  3. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) for 30 minutes.

  4. Serve hot on a napkin.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mushrooms
Their caps hold the filling, and their moisture steams the cups as they bake.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavor through the filling, helping it brown lightly in the oven.
Bread crumbs
Give the filling body and a crisp, golden crust when baked.

The step that matters

Heat the filling until hot, then cool it. Heating the chopped stalks and crumbs with butter softens them and cooks off excess moisture, so the filling stays thick enough to pile on the caps without making them soggy.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Thymefits about as well
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Marjoramfits about as well
  4. Sagefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, butter, bread, 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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