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 ↓
Creamed Mushrooms
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Break the mushroom caps into small pieces.
Cook the mushrooms with a little water for five minutes.
Make the cream sauce
In a bowl, mix the cream with the flour, salt, and pepper.
Add the cream mixture and butter to the mushrooms and cook for ten minutes.
Serve
Serve on toast, or use as a filling for patty cases or timbale cases.
Alternatively, bake in a buttered dish for ten minutes, covered with buttered crumbs.
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.
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Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together12,525 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).
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Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together41,516 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together13,580 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Mushroom + creamtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together4,500 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Fresh mushrooms
- Form the bulk of the dish and release moisture that cooks into the sauce.
- Cream
- Provides richness and body, thickening into a smooth sauce around the mushrooms.
- All-purpose flour
- Thickens the cream mixture so it clings to the mushrooms instead of running off.
- Butter
- Adds fat and rich flavour to the sauce and mushrooms.
The step that matters
Adding the cream mixture to the mushrooms. Flour mixed into cream can clump if poured in unevenly; stirring it in smoothly and cooking gently lets the starch hydrate and thicken the sauce evenly without curdling the cream.
“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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