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Stewed Mushrooms

Stewed mushrooms simmered with water, salt, flour, butter, cream, and egg, served hot with toasted bread.

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

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 ↓

Stewed Mushrooms

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and stew

  1. Wipe the mushrooms with a wet cloth and place them in a saucepan with a little water.

  2. Stew gently for 15 minutes, then add a pinch of salt.

Thicken and finish

  1. Mix flour and butter to create a thick paste.

  2. Let it boil for 5 minutes.

  3. Before serving, add 2 tablespoons of cream mixed with the yolk of 1 egg.

  4. Warm the mixture over low heat for 1 minute, avoiding boiling to prevent curdling.

Serve

  1. Serve hot with toasted bread around the dish.

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

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

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Mushroom + creamtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,500 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Large button mushrooms
Main ingredient that softens as it stews and releases its own juices into the dish.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a paste that gives the sauce body.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and helps the flour paste thicken smoothly.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture to the finished sauce.
Egg
The yolk thickens the cream mixture and adds richness to the sauce.

The step that matters

Warming the cream and yolk mixture gently. Egg yolk proteins thicken the sauce when heated gently, but boiling makes them tighten and curdle, leaving a grainy texture. Keep the heat low and avoid boiling.

“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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