Name: Potted Mushrooms
Ingredients: small flaps or buttons of mushrooms; butter; coarse sea salt; spices; clarified butter; dry paper; melted mutton-suet

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 ↓

Potted Mushrooms

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare small mushrooms without wetting them and wipe them dry after applying salt.
Stew the mushrooms in butter until tender, adding more spices than butter.
Drain the mushrooms in a dish raised a few inches to remove excess butter.
Once cooled, press the mushrooms into small potting pans.
Pour lukewarm clarified butter over the mushrooms and store in a cool, dry place.
For immediate use, place them on a clean shelf; for longer storage, cover with dry paper and melted mutton-suet.

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.

Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together12,525 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).
Mushroom + muttontop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together685 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Butter + muttontop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,781 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).