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Pickled Mushrooms

Mushrooms pickled in vinegar, salt, mace, cloves, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Pickled Mushrooms

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean the mushrooms with a flannel and vinegar.

  2. Sprinkle salt over the mushrooms to draw out their liquid.

Pickle

  1. Place the mushrooms in a kettle with their liquid and enough vinegar to cover them.

  2. Add mace, cloves, and black pepper to taste.

  3. Boil gently for a few minutes.

  4. Bottle and cork 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. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Mushroom + clovetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,663 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Small button mushrooms
Form the main body of the pickle and absorb the spiced vinegar.
Vinegar
Acidifies the liquid, preserving the mushrooms and giving them their tangy flavour.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out of the mushrooms before pickling.
Black pepper
Adds a mild, warm bite that seasons the pickling liquid.

The step that matters

Boil gently for a few minutes. Boiling too hard can break up the delicate mushrooms and cook off vinegar unevenly. A gentle simmer heats the mushrooms through and lets the spices infuse without toughening or shredding them.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Macethe original

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