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To Pickle Mushrooms White

Pickled white mushrooms with salt, mace, ginger, vinegar, and sweet oil.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Mushroom and white wine are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,765 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity. The science ↓

To Pickle Mushrooms White

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mushrooms

  1. Peel the mushrooms carefully with a knife.

  2. Cut off the stems and place the mushrooms in a bowl of saltwater.

  3. In a porcelain skillet, boil the mushrooms in fresh water for 7-8 minutes.

  4. Drain the mushrooms and place them hollow side down on a clean board.

  5. While still hot, sprinkle the mushrooms with salt.

Pickle and seal

  1. Once cooled, layer the mushrooms in a glass jar with mace and sliced ginger.

  2. Fill the jar with cold distilled or white wine vinegar.

  3. Top each jar with a spoonful of sweet oil and seal 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. Mushroom + white winetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,765 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity).

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

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

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

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

  4. White wine + macetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,329 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  5. White wine + gingertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together510 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

Button mushrooms
Are the main ingredient, providing the body and texture of the pickle.
Cold distilled or white wine vinegar
Acidity that preserves the mushrooms and gives the pickle its sharp flavour.
Sweet oil
Forms a fat layer on top that helps seal the jar from air.

The step that matters

Boiling the mushrooms. Boiling for the stated 7-8 minutes softens the mushrooms and removes raw taste before they are pickled. Cooking them too briefly leaves them firm and less safe to keep, while overcooking makes them soft and limp.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, white wine, 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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