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Mushrooms Pickled in Brine

Mushrooms pickled in a brine of water, salt, mace, ginger, and white pepper, preserved in oil.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Mace and white pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,695 recipes. Both carry myrcene, which smells balsamic, herbaceous. The science ↓

Mushrooms Pickled in Brine

Ingredients

Directions

Make the brine

  1. Boil the water, salt, mace, ginger, and white pepper together.

  2. Skim the mixture while boiling.

Pickle and bottle

  1. Add the prepared button mushrooms and boil slowly for a few minutes.

  2. Fill well-dried bottles with the hot mushrooms.

  3. When the bottles are cool, cork them and tie down with skin.

  4. Pour a small quantity of salad oil on top of each bottle to preserve the contents.

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 + white peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,695 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

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

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

  3. Ginger + mushroomtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together867 recipes

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

  4. Ginger + white peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together388 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Mace + mushroomtop 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

Button mushrooms
Are the food being preserved, becoming tender and absorbing the spiced brine flavour.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out and seasons the brine, helping to preserve the mushrooms.
Salad oil (in the method)
Forms a layer over the top of the mushrooms that helps keep air away from the contents.

The step that matters

Fill the bottles with hot mushrooms into well-dried bottles. Bottles must be fully dry before filling, since any leftover water can dilute the brine and encourage spoilage. Filling with hot mushrooms and sealing once cool helps create a vacuum-like seal that limits contact with air and microbes.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Clovefits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mace, ginger, mushroom. 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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