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Creamed Mushrooms

Mushrooms and sliced onion are cooked in butter, then finished with cream, salt, paprika and lemon juice.

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 ↓

Creamed Mushrooms

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel the mushrooms and soak them in cold water with the juice of 1 lemon.

  2. Melt the butter in a 2-quart chafing dish.

Cook and finish

  1. Strain the water from the mushrooms and layer them alternately with the sliced onion in the buttered dish.

  2. Cover and simmer until the mushrooms release their juices and are tender enough to pierce with a fork.

  3. Stir in the cream, salt, and paprika to taste.

  4. Just before serving, add the juice of ½ lemon to enhance the flavors.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Mushroom + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Mushroom + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,633 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Mushrooms
Form the bulk of the dish and release their juices as they cook, moistening the sauce.
Butter
Provides fat that carries flavor and gives the dish its rich, silky body.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth texture that thickens the juices into a creamy sauce.
Onion
Adds aroma and mild sweetness as it softens in the butter and mushroom juices.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and helps keep the mushrooms pale.

The step that matters

Covered simmer until tender. Mushrooms hold a lot of water. Cooking them covered lets that liquid release gently, so they soften evenly without drying or scorching. Stopping too early leaves them tough and watery.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mushroom, onion, cream, butter):

  1. Coconutfits better
  2. Avocadofits better
  3. Plumfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, onion, cream, 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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