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Mushboom-toast

Mushroom Toast is a bread topped with sautéed mushrooms, butter, mace, cayenne, flour, broth, salt, lemon, and fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Mushboom-toast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the stems from the mushrooms and peel them.

Make the mushroom sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan over low heat.

  2. Add the mushrooms, mace, and cayenne; stew for 10 to 15 minutes, stirring often.

  3. Add the flour and stir until lightly browned.

  4. Gradually pour in the gravy or broth and simmer for 2 minutes.

  5. Season with salt and lemon juice.

Serve

  1. Pour the mixture onto a thick slice of bread that has been hollowed out and fried in butter until light brown.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Mushroom + beeftop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  3. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  4. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  5. Pepper + beeftop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Mushrooms
Main body of the topping, releasing moisture and savoury flavour as they stew.
Butter
Fat that cooks the mushrooms and fries the bread, adding richness and browning.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a sauce once it is browned in the butter.
Gravy or beef broth
Liquid that forms the body of the sauce and adds savoury meaty flavour.
Bread
Crisp fried base that holds the mushroom mixture.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour until lightly browned. Flour must cook in the butter long enough to lose its raw taste and to thicken smoothly; if the liquid is added too early or too cold, lumps form and the sauce stays floury.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mushroom, butter, pepper, flour, beef, lemon, bread):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, butter, pepper, flour, beef, lemon, bread. 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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