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Mushrooms

Mushrooms preserved in vinegar, mace, ginger, and sweet oil.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Mace and ginger are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,152 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Mushrooms

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mushrooms

  1. Rub the mushrooms with a cloth dipped in salt and water.

  2. Boil the mushrooms in salt and water for a few minutes until the liquid is drawn out.

  3. Lay the mushrooms on a cloth to cool.

Pickle and seal

  1. Place the mushrooms into jars.

  2. Fill the jars with cold vinegar that has been boiled with mace, salt, and ginger.

  3. Add 1 tablespoon of sweet oil to each jar.

  4. Cork the jars tightly and tie them down.

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. Mace + gingertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,152 recipes

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

  2. Mushroom + gingertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together867 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  3. Mushroom + vinegartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,070 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-methylphenol (smoky, clove).

  4. Vinegar + gingertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,126 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  5. 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 mushrooms
Form the main body of the pickle, absorbing the vinegar and seasoning.
Cold vinegar
Provides the sour acidity that preserves and flavors the mushrooms.
Sweet oil
Adds richness and a smooth fat layer that softens the sharp vinegar.
Ginger
Adds warm, aromatic spice to the pickling liquid.
Mace
Adds a delicate, warm aroma to the vinegar.

The step that matters

Boiling the mushrooms in salt and water. Boiling for only a few minutes draws out the mushrooms' liquid, so they stay firm and absorb the vinegar rather than becoming watery and diluting the pickle. Letting them cool fully before jarring also prevents trapped steam from softening them.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Clovefits better
  2. Garlicfits better
  3. Turmericfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, vinegar, 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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