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Mushrooms Pickled White

A pickled mushroom dish preserved in vinegar, salt, mace, and oil.

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 in cold water using a soft wool cloth dipped in salt, placing them in fresh cold water as you clean each one.

  2. Put the mushrooms in a pan with a handful of table salt and cover them.

  3. Heat over moderate fire for 10 minutes until hot and water is drawn out.

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

  5. Cover the mushrooms to keep them from air until cold.

Pickle and seal

  1. 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.

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 main body of the pickle, becoming tender and firm as they are heated.
Distilled or white wine vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the mushrooms and gives the pickle its sharp flavour.
Salad oil
Adds a little fat that softens the sharpness of the vinegar and coats the mushrooms.

The step that matters

Drying the mushrooms before bottling. Mushrooms still holding surface water dilute the vinegar and can spoil the pickle. Drying them fully between cloths, and cooling them covered until cold, keeps the brine strong and the mushrooms firm.

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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