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Stewed Mushrooms

A simple mushroom stew made with butter, flour, water, beef extract, lemon juice, salt, pepper, and fresh mushrooms.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Stewed Mushrooms

Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Stewed Mushrooms

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Melt the butter in a chafing dish.

  2. Stir in the flour and allow it to brown slightly.

  3. Add the water and beef extract.

  4. Peel the mushrooms, add them to the mixture, and cook for about 20 minutes.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Mushroom + beeftop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

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

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

  4. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  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

Fresh mushrooms
Form the main body of the dish and release moisture that becomes part of the sauce as they cook.
Butter
Carries the flavor of the dish and provides the fat in which the flour is cooked.
Flour
Thickens the liquid as its starch swells, and browning it slightly adds a nutty flavor.
Beef extract
Adds concentrated savory, meaty flavor to the cooking liquid.

The step that matters

Brown the flour slightly before adding the water. Cooking flour in butter until lightly browned removes its raw taste and gives the sauce a deeper, nutty flavor. Stirring steadily keeps it from scorching, and adding the liquid afterward helps prevent lumps.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Avocadofits about as well
  3. Plumfits about as well
  4. Coconutfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, beef, pepper, butter, flour. 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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