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To Pickle Mushrooms

A preserved mushroom dish made by pickling small pasture mushrooms in a vinegar brine with spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and mace are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,557 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

To Pickle Mushrooms

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mushrooms

  1. Select small, sound pasture mushrooms of similar size.

  2. Soak them in cold water for a few minutes, then drain.

  3. Cut off the stalks and rub off the outer skin with a moist flannel dipped in salt.

Pickle

  1. Boil the vinegar and add salt, nutmeg, mace, and white peppercorns.

  2. Add the mushrooms to the boiling vinegar for 10 minutes.

  3. Pour the mixture into small jars, ensuring spices are evenly distributed.

  4. Let them stand for a day, then cover the jars.

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. Nutmeg + macetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Mushroom + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,988 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  5. Vinegar + macetop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,415 recipes

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

What each ingredient does

Pasture mushrooms
Provide the main body of the pickle, which absorbs the vinegar and spices.
Vinegar
Acidity that preserves the mushrooms and gives the pickle its sharp flavour.
Salt
Seasons the brine and helps draw out moisture and firm the mushroom flesh.
White peppercorns
Add a warm, sharp aroma and pungency to the pickling liquid.

The step that matters

Boiling the mushrooms in the vinegar for 10 minutes. Too short a time leaves the mushrooms underprocessed and less safely preserved, while too long softens them and makes them limp. Keeping the vinegar at a full boil ensures even heat and steady acid penetration.

Swap the mace

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

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

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