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Mushrooms for Puddings

Mushrooms are simmered in butter, water, salt, and lemon juice for use in a pudding.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and mushroom 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 ↓

Mushrooms for Puddings

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mushrooms

  1. Trim the dirty parts off the mushrooms.

  2. Wash them quickly in 3 or 4 waters.

  3. Peel the mushrooms with a sharp vegetable knife.

Cook the mushrooms

  1. In a stewpan, melt the butter with a little water.

  2. Add a pinch of salt and a few drops of lemon juice.

  3. Add them to the prepared liquid as you finish.

  4. Cover and boil for about 4 minutes.

  5. Set aside in the liquid.

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 + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + mushroomtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,633 recipes

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

  3. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Button mushrooms
Provide the main body of the dish, softening into a tender, moist filling as they cook.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour and giving the mushrooms a silky texture.

The step that matters

Cover and boil for about 4 minutes. Mushrooms are mostly water. Boiling them covered in the buttery liquid softens them and releases moisture; boiling too long turns them rubbery and drains flavour.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Coconutfits better
  2. Plumfits better
  3. Peachfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, mushroom. 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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