Skip to main content
Preserve

To Preserve Mushrooms

A method of preserving mushrooms by stewing, seasoning, and canning them in butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Mushroom and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,525 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

To Preserve Mushrooms

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Place the cut mushrooms in a saucepan and stew until all the liquid is drawn out.

  2. Continue cooking until the mushrooms are completely dry.

  3. Add a good lump of butter, cayenne pepper, and salt to the pan.

  4. Once it has boiled, pour the mixture into small jars, covering them well with butter.

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 + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  2. Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Mushrooms
Main ingredient; stewing draws out their liquid, which is then cooked off to concentrate their flavour.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and covers the jarred mushrooms to help preserve them.

The step that matters

Cooking the mushrooms until completely dry. Mushrooms release a lot of water when cooked. If moisture remains, the mixture stays wet and is less likely to keep well in jars. Cooking off the liquid concentrates the flavour and gives a firmer texture.

“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.

You might also like

Green Corn PuddingGreen Corn Pudding64 recipesCornmeal mushCornmeal mush12 recipes