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Baked Mushrooms

Mushrooms baked with salt, pepper, lemon juice, parsley, butter, and a cream sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Baked Mushrooms

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Bake the mushrooms

  1. Prepare mushrooms as for stewing.

  2. Place them in a baking pan and season with salt, pepper, lemon juice, and chopped parsley.

  3. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven for 15 minutes, basting with butter.

  4. Arrange on a dish and pour gravy over them.

Make the sauce

  1. For the sauce, combine cream, butter, chopped parsley, cayenne pepper, salt, white sauce, and lemon juice in a saucepan.

  2. Heat while stirring until thick, but do not let it boil.

Serve

  1. Serve mushrooms on well-buttered 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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Mushrooms
The main ingredient; they soften and release their juices as they bake.
Butter
Adds richness, and basting with it helps the mushrooms brown and stay moist.
Cream
Adds richness and body, thickening the sauce as it heats.
White sauce
Adds body, helping thicken the sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the mushrooms and the sauce.

The step that matters

Heat the sauce gently while stirring. Stirring keeps the cream and butter from scorching on the pan base. Holding the sauce below a boil keeps the dairy from curdling, so it thickens smoothly.

“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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