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To Pickle Mushrooms

A pickled mushroom recipe using vinegar, spices, lemon, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Mushroom and shallot are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,982 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

To Pickle Mushrooms

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pickling liquid

  1. Combine vinegar, whole white pepper, ginger, mace, shallots, and garlic in a pot.

  2. Boil for 10 minutes and let cool.

Prepare the mushrooms

  1. Peel and wash the mushrooms.

  2. Strain and place them in a stewpan.

  3. Add lemon juice and salt to the mushrooms.

  4. Cover the pan and heat until the mushrooms release their liquid.

Jar and seal

  1. Transfer the mushrooms to jars and cover with the pickling liquid.

  2. Seal jars with bladder and white leather.

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

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

  2. Shallot + garlictop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,000 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. White wine + mushroomtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,765 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity).

  4. Ginger + garlictop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,402 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Mushroom + garlictop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,700 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Fresh button mushrooms
Form the main body of the pickle and absorb the vinegar flavour.
Double distilled white wine vinegar
Acts as the pickling liquid, preserving the mushrooms and giving them their sharp acidity.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity and brightness to the mushrooms.
Shallots
Add a mild savoury sweetness and aromatic depth to the pickling liquid.

The step that matters

Heating the mushrooms until they release their liquid. Heating only until the mushrooms release their liquid, rather than cooking them long, keeps them firm and prevents them from turning soggy and dark in the jars.

Swap the garlic

The recipe marks garlic as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (white wine, vinegar, mushroom, white pepper, ginger, mace, shallot):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Clovefits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Garlicthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against white wine, vinegar, mushroom, white pepper, ginger, mace, 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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