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To Stew Mushrooms

A stew of button mushrooms simmered with lemon, butter, cream, and bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper 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 ↓

To Stew Mushrooms

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Rub the mushrooms with coarse sea salt and a cloth.

  2. Remove the skin from the mushrooms.

Stew

  1. Place the mushrooms in a stew pan with lemon juice, black pepper, and a small piece of fresh butter.

  2. Simmer slowly until tender.

  3. Add a small piece of butter and brown flour.

  4. Stir in the heavy cream.

  5. Bring to a boil.

Serve

  1. Serve with slices of bread.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  5. Mushroom + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 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

Large button mushrooms
Form the main body of the dish, softening into a tender, savoury base as they simmer.
Fresh butter
Adds richness and a smooth mouthfeel to the stewing liquid.
Brown flour
Thickens the stewing liquid so the sauce clings to the mushrooms.
Heavy cream
Adds fat and body, giving the sauce a rich, smooth texture.

The step that matters

Bring to a boil. Once cream is stirred in, boiling can cause it to separate or scorch on the pan base. Keep the heat controlled and stir to keep the sauce smooth and cohesive.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Figfits about as well
  2. Coconutfits about as well
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Plumfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, pepper, butter, cream, flour, 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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