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Pickled Mushrooms

Pickled mushrooms preserved in a salted vinegar solution with mace and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Mushroom and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13,580 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Pickled Mushrooms

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mushrooms

  1. Rub the mushrooms with a piece of flannel and salt.

  2. Cut off the stalks.

  3. Remove the red inside from very large mushrooms.

  4. Discard any black ones.

  5. Sprinkle salt over the mushrooms.

  6. Add the mace, black pepper, and red pepper.

Cook and pickle

  1. Shake over a clear fire until the liquid flows.

  2. Continue shaking until it dries up.

  3. Add enough vinegar to cover the mushrooms.

  4. Let it simmer for one minute.

Store

  1. Store the mushrooms in stone jars.

  2. Let them cool completely before sealing.

  3. Seal with bladders.

  4. Keep in a very dry place for long-term storage.

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

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

  2. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

  3. Mace + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Mushroom + vinegartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,070 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-methylphenol (smoky, clove).

  5. Mushroom + macetop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,529 recipes

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

Mace and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Young button mushrooms
Form the main body of the dish, becoming tender as they are cooked and pickled.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out of the mushrooms and seasons them before pickling.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that preserves the mushrooms and gives them a sharp, tangy flavor.

The step that matters

Shake over a clear fire until the liquid flows, then until it dries up. Shaking over heat drives off the moisture the salt has drawn out. If the mushrooms are not dried enough, excess water dilutes the vinegar and can spoil them during storage.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, pepper, vinegar. 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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