Skip to main content
Preserve

Mushrooms Preserved

A method of preserving mushrooms by layering them in cans with salt, garlic, and olive oil, then boiling.

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

Why it works: Garlic and olive are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 25,665 recipes. Both carry linalool, which smells floral, citrus. The science ↓

Mushrooms Preserved

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Select mushrooms of the same size, peel, wash, and dry them on a towel.

Pack the cans

  1. Arrange mushrooms in layers in pint tin cans, seasoning each layer with coarse sea salt.

  2. Add one clove of garlic to each can.

  3. Cover mushrooms with best olive oil.

Seal and process

  1. Seal the cans and boil them in a hot water bath for 1.5 hours.

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. Garlic + olivetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,665 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  2. Mushroom + garlictop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,700 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  3. Mushroom + olivetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,571 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans,trans-2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  4. Clove + garlictop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,368 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  5. Clove + olivetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,866 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Mushrooms
Form the main body of the dish and set its texture once cooked.
Best olive oil
Covers the mushrooms, adding richness and helping keep air away from them.
Garlic
Adds aroma that deepens as the mushrooms sit and cook in the cans.

The step that matters

Seal the cans and boil them in a hot water bath for 1.5 hours. Heat must penetrate the whole can to destroy spoilage microbes. Sealing keeps air and contaminants out, and a sealed can that is underprocessed can spoil or become unsafe.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Rosemaryfits better
  3. Oreganofits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, garlic, olive. 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.

You might also like

Green Corn PuddingGreen Corn Pudding64 recipesCornmeal mushCornmeal mush12 recipes