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Stewed Mushrooms

A simple mushroom stew cooked with butter, flour, milk or stock, seasoned with salt and pepper, served over toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Stewed Mushrooms

Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Stewed Mushrooms

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash mushrooms, remove stems, scrape, and cut into pieces.

  2. Peel caps and break into pieces.

Make the stew

  1. Melt butter in a saucepan; add mushrooms and cook for 2 minutes.

  2. Sprinkle with flour; when blended, add milk or stock.

  3. Cook slowly for 5 to 15 minutes or until tender; season to taste.

Serve

  1. Serve on fingers of toast, garnished with toast points and parsley.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

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

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

  4. Mushroom + milktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,231 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Mushrooms
Form the main body of the dish and release moisture and earthy flavor as they cook.
Butter
Adds fat and richness that carries flavor through the mushrooms.
Flour
Its starch thickens the liquid into a smooth, lightly bodied sauce.
Milk or stock
Forms the liquid of the sauce, adding moisture and richness.

The step that matters

Cook slowly until tender. Gentle heat lets the mushrooms soften fully and the flour thicken the liquid smoothly. Rapid boiling can scorch or curdle milk and leave the sauce lumpy or uneven.

“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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