Why it works: Mushroom and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,633 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓
Mushrooms Preserved in Cans
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Select fresh, solid mushrooms and trim them.
Wash the mushrooms in cold acidulated water and drain.
Cook
In a saucepan, combine mushrooms, lemon juice, water, and salt.
Cover the saucepan and cook on brisk heat for 5 minutes.
Transfer the mushrooms to an earthen bowl and let them cool, then drain off the moisture.
Can and process
Pack the mushrooms into pint tin cans and add enough juice to cover them.
Seal the cans and boil them in a hot water bath for 2 hours.
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.
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Mushroom + lemontop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together4,633 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Mushrooms
- The main ingredient, which softens and releases moisture as it cooks.
- Lemon juice
- Acidity that keeps the mushrooms pale and helps preserve them in the can.
The step that matters
Seal the cans and process in the hot water bath. Canned mushrooms are low in acid, so they must be sealed airtight and heated long enough in the water bath to kill harmful microorganisms. Under-processing can make the contents unsafe to store and eat.
“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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