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Stewed Mushrooms

Stewed mushrooms simmered in water or stock with butter, flour, lemon juice, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Stewed Mushrooms

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 ↓

Stewed Mushrooms

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the mushrooms, removing the skins and stalks, then cut them into halves or quarters.

  2. Add 1 tablespoon of lemon juice to the boiling water to keep the mushrooms white.

  3. Bring water or stock to a boil.

Stew

  1. Add the mushrooms to the boiling liquid.

  2. Season the mushrooms with salt, pepper, and a little butter after they become tender.

Thicken and serve

  1. Mix flour and butter in a stew-pan until it bubbles.

  2. Add the mushrooms to the mixture.

  3. Cook together for a few moments.

  4. Serve.

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

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

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

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

  3. Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, 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 body of the dish and release moisture that becomes part of the stew.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a light, smooth sauce when cooked with butter.
Butter
Adds richness and flavour, and cooks with the flour to form the thickening base.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity and helps keep the mushrooms pale rather than darkening.

The step that matters

Adding the mushrooms to the flour and butter mixture. Once the flour and butter have bubbled, the roux must be cooked briefly so the flour loses its raw taste and thickens evenly. Adding the mushrooms to it then coats them in a smooth sauce rather than leaving lumps or a floury flavour.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Plumfits about as well
  3. Limefits less well
  4. Cherryfits less well

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