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Stewed Mushrooms

A dish of button mushrooms stewed with water, salt, flour, butter, cream, and egg yolk.

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 stew pan with a little water.

  2. Stew gently for 15 minutes.

  3. Add a pinch of salt and mix flour and butter to create a thick paste.

Thicken and finish

  1. Let it boil for 5 minutes.

  2. Before serving, mix cream with the egg yolk and add to the pan.

  3. Warm the mixture over the fire for a minute, but do not let it boil.

  4. Serve hot with slices 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 during stewing and releases moisture into the liquid.
Flour
Combined with butter to form a paste that thickens the stewing liquid.
Butter
Fat that mixes with flour to form a paste and adds richness to the sauce.
Cream
Adds richness and smooth body to the sauce.
Egg yolk
Thickens the cream mixture when warmed gently, giving a silky texture.

The step that matters

Warm the mixture without boiling. Egg yolk mixed into the cream can curdle and turn grainy if it boils. Warming it gently over low heat thickens it smoothly while keeping the sauce silky.

“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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