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Mushrooms

Mushrooms preserved in a spiced sherry and vinegar 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 rub them clean with a flannel and salt.

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

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

Steep and pickle

  1. Let it sit for a day or two until the mushrooms absorb the spices.

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

  3. 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

Small white button mushrooms
Form the main body of the pickle and soak up the spiced liquid.
Sherry
Adds aromatic depth and a mellow sweetness to the pickling liquid.
Hot vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves and sharpens the pickled mushrooms.

The step that matters

Heating the jar before the vinegar is added. Heating the mushrooms only until they are just about to boil keeps them firm and tender, while overheating them can make them soft and rubbery. Hot vinegar then brings the liquid to a boil so it can seal the flavour in.

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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