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Stewed Mushrooms

A dish of sautéed mushrooms seasoned with pepper, salt, butter, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Stewed Mushrooms

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 ↓

Stewed Mushrooms

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the skins and ends of the mushroom stems.

  2. Wash the mushrooms thoroughly.

  3. Place them in a saucepan without added water.

Cook

  1. Season with pepper, coarse sea salt, and a piece of butter.

  2. Dredge a little flour over the mushrooms.

  3. Cook slowly over low heat, stirring often.

  4. Serve hot.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Pepper + flourtop 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

Mushrooms
Form the dish itself, releasing their own moisture as they cook down into a stew.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour and helping the mushrooms brown lightly.
Flour
Lightly thickens the juices released by the mushrooms as they stew, giving body to the sauce.

The step that matters

Cook slowly over low heat, stirring often. Mushrooms release a lot of water as they heat. Cooking gently lets that liquid evaporate and concentrate its flavour, while stirring keeps the flour from clumping and scorching on the pan bottom.

“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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