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Stewld Mushrooms

A sautéed mushroom dish simmered in butter, flour, salt, cayenne pepper, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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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 ↓

Stewld Mushrooms

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel and wash the fresh mushrooms thoroughly.

  2. In a frying pan, melt the butter over medium heat.

Cook

  1. Add the mushrooms and fry for a few minutes.

  2. Stir in the flour, salt, and cayenne pepper, and cook until browned.

  3. Add enough water to prevent burning and let it boil until the mushrooms are tender.

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. Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Mushroom + flourtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,253 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 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

Butter
Melts to fry the mushrooms and carries flavour into the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid and helps the mushrooms brown.
Fresh mushrooms
Form the main body of the dish and release moisture as they cook.

The step that matters

Stir in the flour and cook until browned. Flour needs enough heat and time to lose its raw taste and brown lightly. Adding water too early can leave it pasty and lumpy, so the flour should cook briefly in the fat first.

“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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