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To Picele Mushrooms

A pickled mushroom recipe using wild or meadow mushrooms, vinegar, spices, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Mace and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,557 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

To Picele Mushrooms

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mushrooms

  1. Select the smallest wild or meadow mushrooms and cut the stems close.

  2. Clean the mushrooms with a damp cloth dipped in fine salt.

  3. Soak the mushrooms in spring water mixed with a large spoonful of salt, then drain quickly.

  4. Lay the mushrooms on a soft cloth to dry.

Make the pickle and cook

  1. In a pot, combine the white wine vinegar, heaped teaspoon of salt, whole white pepper, ginger, cayenne, mace, and nutmeg (if using).

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  3. Add the mushrooms and boil for 6 to 9 minutes, adjusting time for size.

Jar and store

  1. Transfer the mushrooms to small stone jars or warm wide-necked bottles, dividing the spices equally.

  2. Seal the jars with corks or cover with skins and paper once cooled.

  3. Store in a dry place away from severe frost.

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 + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Ginger + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Mushroom + white winetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,765 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity).

  4. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Ginger + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,800 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Wild or meadow mushrooms
Form the main body of the pickle, absorbing the spiced vinegar as they cook.
White wine vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves and sharpens the pickled mushrooms.
Ginger
Adds aromatic warmth to the pickling liquid.

The step that matters

Boiling the mushrooms. Boiling for too long softens the mushrooms and makes them limp, while boiling for too short a time may leave them undercooked; size determines the right time, so check smaller and larger mushrooms separately.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Clovefits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Nutmegthe original

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