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Curry of Mushrooms

A mushroom curry thickened with butter, curry powder, and flour, finished with cream, served on toast.

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

Curry of Mushrooms

Ingredients

Directions

Make the curry

  1. Stew the mushrooms in soup stock for 20 minutes until well covered.

  2. Add the butter, curry powder, and wheat flour to thicken.

  3. Boil slowly for 10 minutes.

  4. Remove from heat and stir in the cream just before serving.

Serve

  1. Serve on very hot toast on a hot 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.

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. Mushroom + wheattop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together124 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  4. Wheat + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,373 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  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

Button mushrooms
Form the main body of the dish and release flavorful juices into the stock.
Butter
Adds richness and carries the curry powder's flavor through the sauce.
Curry powder
Provides the spiced aroma and flavor that defines the dish.
Wheat flour
Thickens the stock into a sauce as it cooks.
Cream
Adds smoothness and mild richness to the sauce.

The step that matters

Stirring in the cream off the heat. Cream can curdle or separate when kept at a hard boil for long, so it is added after removing the pan from heat. Keeping the sauce below a boil lets the cream blend in smoothly.

“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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