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To Pickle Mushrooms Brown

A pickled mushroom recipe using anchovies, mace, pepper, ginger, shallots, salt, and alegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and clove 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 ↓

To Pickle Mushrooms Brown

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the mushrooms in alegar using a flannel.

  2. In a saucepan, combine the chopped anchovies, mace, pepper, ginger, salt, and shallots.

  3. Add enough alegar to half cover the mixture and set it on the fire.

Cook and bottle

  1. Let it stew until the mushrooms shrink significantly.

  2. Once cooled, transfer the mushrooms to small bottles and pour the alegar over them. Cork and seal the bottles tightly.

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. Ginger + clovetop 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. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Clove + shallottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,677 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

What each ingredient does

Mushroom-buttons
Form the main body of the pickle and shrink while stewing, concentrating their flavour.
Anchovies
Add a salty, savoury depth that rounds out the pickling liquid.
Shallots
Contribute pungent aromatic flavour that mellows during stewing.
Alegar
Acts as the sharp, preserving liquid that covers the mushrooms in the bottles.

The step that matters

Let it stew until the mushrooms shrink significantly. Stewing drives off moisture from the mushrooms and concentrates their flavour, so the pickle does not turn watery in the bottle. Stopping too early leaves excess liquid that dilutes the finished pickle.

Swap the mace

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

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

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