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Mushrooms

Mushrooms preserved in a spiced vinegar and sherry brine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Mushrooms

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut off the roots of the mushrooms and clean them with a flannel cloth and salt.

  2. Place the mushrooms in a jar and add salt, ginger, whole pepper, mace, hay leaf, lemon rind, and sherry.

Heat and steep

  1. Cover the jar tightly and heat it on the stove until it is thoroughly heated and just about to boil.

  2. Let it sit for one or two days until the mushrooms absorb the spices.

Pickle and cool

  1. Cover the mushrooms with hot vinegar, close the jar again, and heat until it just comes to a boil.

  2. Remove from heat and let it cool completely.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Ginger + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Mushroom + sherrytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,176 recipes

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

  4. Ginger + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,800 recipes

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

  5. Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 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
Form the body of the pickle and absorb the spiced liquid as they steep.
Sherry
Adds a fortified wine aroma and mild sweetness to the spiced liquid.
Hot vinegar
Provides the sharp acidity that preserves and flavours the mushrooms.
Ginger
Adds warm, pungent aroma that infuses into the mushrooms.

The step that matters

Heating the jar before the vinegar is added. Heating only until just about to boil, rather than boiling hard, helps the mushrooms take up the spices without turning soft and rubbery. Overheating can break down their texture.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, ginger, pepper, lemon, sherry, 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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