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To Pickle Mushrooms

A method for pickling button mushrooms with salt, mace, pepper, and white wine vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Mushroom and white wine are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,765 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity. The science ↓

To Pickle Mushrooms

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Rub and clean the mushrooms with flannel and coarse sea salt.

  2. Sprinkle some salt over them and place them in a stew-pan with mace and whole pepper.

Pickle

  1. Shake the mushrooms well while the liquid comes out until it is absorbed back.

  2. Pour in enough white wine vinegar to cover the mushrooms.

  3. Warm the mixture on the stove and transfer it to a jar.

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. Mushroom + white winetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,765 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity).

  2. White wine + vinegartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,776 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

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

  4. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Pepper + white winetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,433 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

Button mushrooms
Form the main body of the pickle, becoming tender and absorbing the vinegar flavour.
White wine vinegar
Provides acidity that preserves the mushrooms and gives the pickle its sharp taste.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out of the mushrooms, seasoning them and firming their texture.

The step that matters

Shaking the mushrooms while the liquid is drawn out. Salt pulls water out of the mushrooms; they must be shaken and given time to reabsorb that liquid. Leaving them still can leave them unevenly seasoned and soggy.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mushroom, pepper, white wine, vinegar):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, pepper, white wine, vinegar. 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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