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Mushrooms

A method of preserving fresh mushrooms by cooking them in butter, salt, water, and citric acid, then packing them into bottles.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Mushroom and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,525 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Mushrooms

Oven, in the book's wordsA slack oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mushrooms

  1. Gather mushrooms on a dry day.

  2. Wash and dry the mushrooms.

Cook

  1. In a pan, melt butter and add a pinch of salt, a little water, and a few drops of citric acid.

  2. Add the mushrooms and cover the pan; let them boil for 3 minutes.

  3. Remove mushrooms with a flat strainer and let moisture drain off.

Pack and seal

  1. Pack mushrooms into wide-mouthed bottles, adding very little liquid.

  2. Skim off butter and add it to the mushrooms in the bottles.

  3. Seal the bottles with a double-folded bladder and boil them as previously described.

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 + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

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

What each ingredient does

Fresh mushrooms
Supply the main body of the preserve, releasing moisture that the drain step removes.
Butter
Adds fat and richness and coats the mushrooms in the bottles.
Citric acid
Adds acidity that helps keep the mushrooms stable during preserving.

The step that matters

Remove mushrooms with a flat strainer and let moisture drain off. Excess water left on the mushrooms dilutes the butter and can encourage spoilage in the sealed bottles. Draining well before packing keeps the preserve firmer and more stable.

“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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