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Mushrooms Pickled Brown

A pickled mushroom dish preserved in vinegar with anchovies, shallots, mace, cloves, ginger, and cayenne.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,038 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Mushrooms Pickled Brown

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the mushrooms in salt and water using a flannel.

  2. Place the mushrooms in a pan and cover them with common vinegar.

  3. Chop the anchovies and shallots finely, then add mace, cloves, ginger, and cayenne.

Cook

  1. Combine the chopped ingredients and mushrooms in a saucepan with enough vinegar to cover them.

  2. Simmer over low heat until the mushrooms begin to shrivel.

  3. Remove from heat and let cool.

Bottle

  1. Transfer the mushrooms and spices into bottles, filling with vinegar.

  2. Cork and seal the bottles well.

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. Clove + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Mushroom + shallottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,982 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Shallot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,677 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Shallot + gingertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together565 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Mushrooms
Form the bulk of the pickle and absorb the vinegar and spices as they shrivel.
Common vinegar
Acidic preserving liquid that flavours the mushrooms and keeps them stable in the bottle.
Anchovies
Dissolve into the liquid during simmering, adding savoury depth to the pickle.
Shallots
Add mild onion-like pungency that mellows during the long simmer.

The step that matters

Simmer over low heat until the mushrooms begin to shrivel. Gentle heat lets the mushrooms soften and take up the vinegar and spices without boiling hard, which would toughen them and reduce the liquid too quickly.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mushroom, vinegar, shallot, clove, ginger):

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Turmericfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, vinegar, shallot, clove, ginger. 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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