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To Pickle Mushrooms and Keep in Brine for Winter Use

A method of pickling small white button mushrooms in a salt, spice, and vinegar brine for winter storage.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,800 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

To Pickle Mushrooms and Keep in Brine for Winter Use

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Rub the mushrooms with a cloth or sponge dipped in salt.

  2. Place them in a stone jar with mace, ginger, pepper, and salt.

Cook

  1. Stew the mushrooms in their own juices over low heat, shaking gently to avoid breaking them.

  2. Continue cooking until they are almost dry, ensuring they do not burn.

  3. Once the liquid is absorbed, add enough hot vinegar to cover the mushrooms and bring to a boil.

Bottle

  1. When cooled, bottle the mushrooms for 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. Ginger + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,800 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

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

  3. Mace + gingertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,152 recipes

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

  4. Mushroom + gingertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together867 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Pepper + vinegartop 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 white button mushrooms
The main ingredient, which softens and concentrates in flavor as they stew down in their own juices.
Hot vinegar
Provides acidity that sharpens the flavor and helps preserve the mushrooms once covered and boiled.

The step that matters

Cooking the mushrooms until almost dry. If the heat is too high or the pan is left unattended, the mushrooms can scorch and taste bitter. Gentle heat lets the juices evaporate slowly while the mushrooms stay intact and tender.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, ginger, 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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