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Mushroom Fricassee

A creamy mushroom dish cooked with milk, butter, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓

Mushroom Fricassee

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Place the cleaned mushrooms in a saucepan with water, milk, and salt.

  2. Set the saucepan over high heat and bring to a boil three times.

  3. Remove from heat and mix in the half pint of milk, butter, and nutmeg.

  4. Return to the saucepan, shaking occasionally until the mixture thickens.

  5. Stir carefully to prevent curdling.

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. Milk + buttertop 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. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, 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 that combines with the milk.
Milk
Forms the creamy sauce base that thickens when heated with the flour-coated butter.
Butter
Adds richness and, rolled in flour, helps thicken the sauce as it melts.

The step that matters

Stir carefully to prevent curdling. Milk proteins can separate and turn grainy when heated hard or stirred roughly, so gentle heat and careful stirring keep the sauce smooth once the milk and butter are added.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits about as well
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Capersfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, milk, 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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