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Mushrooms Pickled White

Mushrooms pickled in white wine vinegar with salt, oil, and mace.

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 ↓

Mushrooms Pickled White

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mushrooms

  1. Clean the mushrooms by rubbing each one with a soft cloth dipped in coarse sea salt.

  2. Rinse the mushrooms in fresh cold water.

  3. Place the mushrooms in a pan with a handful of coarse sea salt and cover them.

  4. Heat over moderate heat for about 10 minutes until hot and water is drawn out.

  5. Drain the mushrooms in a sieve and dry them between two cloths.

Pickle and seal

  1. Once cool, pack the mushrooms in clean, dry glass bottles with a little mace.

  2. Fill the bottles with distilled or white wine vinegar and add 1 teaspoon of salad oil to each.

  3. Cork and seal the bottles to exclude air, and let them sit for a month.

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 + macetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,329 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  3. Mushroom + macetop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,529 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

What each ingredient does

Small button mushrooms
Form the body of the pickle, becoming tender and absorbing the vinegar flavour.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the mushrooms, firming them and concentrating their flavour before pickling.
Distilled or white wine vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the mushrooms and gives the pickle its sharp taste.
Salad oil
Adds fat and a smooth mouthfeel that softens the sharpness of the vinegar.
Mace
Contributes a warm, aromatic spice flavour to the pickling liquid.

The step that matters

Drying the mushrooms before packing. Mushrooms left wet after salting dilute the vinegar and can spoil in the bottle. Drying them well between cloths keeps the pickle firm and stable during the month of sitting.

Swap the mace

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

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

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