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Mushroom Powder

A dried mushroom powder made by cooking mushrooms with spices and butter, then drying and grinding.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Mushroom Powder

Oven, in the book's wordsA cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the mushrooms thoroughly and cut off the stalks.

Cook

  1. In a saucepan, combine the mushrooms with mace, ground pepper, onions, coarse sea salt, allspice, nutmeg, and butter.

  2. Cook without water until the liquid evaporates.

Dry and store

  1. Transfer the mixture to sieves and let it dry until it can be ground into a powder.

  2. Store the powder in small, tightly corked bottles.

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. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Allspice + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,331 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Mushrooms
Provide the main bulk and savoury flavour that becomes the powder.
Butter
Adds fat and richness while the mushrooms cook down in the pan.
Onions
Contribute savoury sweetness and aroma as they cook with the mushrooms.

The step that matters

Cook without water until the liquid evaporates. Mushrooms release a lot of water as they heat. Cooking until it fully evaporates concentrates their flavour and leaves a mixture dry enough to sieve and grind into powder. Stopping early leaves moisture that slows drying and can cause spoilage.

Swap the allspice

The recipe marks allspice as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mushroom, mace, pepper, onion, clove, nutmeg, butter):

  1. Allspicethe original
  2. Cinnamonfits about as well
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Marjoramfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, mace, pepper, onion, clove, nutmeg, butter. 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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