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To Keep Mushrooms

A method for preserving button mushrooms by drying, boiling with mace, and storing in suet.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Mushroom and mace are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,529 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

To Keep Mushrooms

Oven, in the book's wordsA cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a cool oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the mushrooms

  1. Wash the mushrooms and lay them on a sieve with the stalks facing up.

  2. Sprinkle salt on the mushrooms to draw out the water.

Cook and reduce

  1. Once drained, place them in a pot and set in a cool oven at 300°F (150°C) for one hour.

  2. Remove the mushrooms and let them cool and drain.

  3. Boil the liquid from the mushrooms with one or two blades of mace until reduced by half.

Jar and seal

  1. Transfer the mushrooms to a well-dried jar, pour the cooled liquid over them, and cover with rendered suet.

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Large button mushrooms
Provide the main body of the preserve, softening as they cook in their own liquid.
Salt
Draws water out of the mushrooms, concentrating their flavour before cooking.
Rendered suet
Forms a fat layer over the jar that seals out air and helps preserve the mushrooms.

The step that matters

Cooling and draining before jarring. The mushrooms must be fully cooled and the liquid reduced and cooled before jarring. Warm liquid or wet jars can cause condensation and spoilage, and the fat seal only works on a dry, cool surface.

“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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