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Pickled Mushrooms

Pickled mushrooms boiled in vinegar with optional spices and stored in bottles.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Mace and nutmeg 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 ↓

Pickled Mushrooms

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the mushrooms

  1. Boil the vinegar and skim off any foam.

  2. Add the mushrooms and boil for 8 to 10 minutes until tender.

Bottle and store

  1. Place the mushrooms in glass bottles.

  2. Divide the spices among the bottles.

  3. Once cooled, seal the bottles and store in a dry place.

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. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

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

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

  5. Vinegar + peppertop 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

Mushrooms
Form the main body of the dish and soften as they simmer in the vinegar.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that gives the pickle its sharp flavour and helps preserve the mushrooms.

The step that matters

Once cooled, seal the bottles. Sealing while the mushrooms and vinegar are still hot can create pressure and weaken the seal, so waiting for them to cool lets the bottles close safely and keeps the contents stable in storage.

Swap the mace

The recipe marks mace as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mushroom, vinegar, nutmeg, pepper):

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

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