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Mushrooms, Pickled

A pickled mushroom preserve made with vinegar, ginger, peppercorns, mace, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and mace are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,152 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Mushrooms, Pickled

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mushrooms

  1. Wash, dry, and peel the mushrooms, then cut off the tops of the stalks.

  2. Place the mushrooms in a stewpan, sprinkle with salt, and shake over the heat until the liquid flows.

  3. Keep the mushrooms on the stove uncovered until most of the moisture has evaporated.

Pickle and store

  1. Add the vinegar, peppercorns, and mace.

  2. Bring to a boil, and simmer gently for 10 minutes.

  3. Transfer to jars, cover closely, and store in a cool, 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. Ginger + macetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,152 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Vinegar + gingertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,126 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  5. 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

Button mushrooms
Provide the main body of the pickle, softening as they cook and absorbing the vinegar flavour.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves and sharpens the pickled mushrooms.
Sea salt
Draws out moisture from the mushrooms so they lose liquid before the vinegar is added.

The step that matters

Evaporating the mushroom moisture. Mushrooms release a lot of water. If too much liquid remains when the vinegar is added, the brine is diluted and the pickle becomes weaker and less stable in storage. Cooking until most moisture has evaporated keeps the vinegar concentration effective.

Swap the mace

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

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

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