Name: White Pickled Mushrooms
Ingredients: small button mushrooms; coarse sea salt; milk; white wine vinegar; spices; sweet oil

Why it works: Mushroom and white wine are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,765 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity. The science ↓

White Pickled Mushrooms

Ingredients

Directions

Cut off the roots of the mushrooms and wash them thoroughly with salt and water.
Rinse the mushrooms again in a mixture of milk and water with a little salt.
Blanch the mushrooms by boiling them in milk and water.
Boil and skim the white wine vinegar with spices.
Place the drained mushrooms into the vinegar.
In small glasses, layer spices at the bottom, followed by mushrooms.
Once the vinegar is cool, pour it into the glasses nearly to the top.
Fill the rest with sweet oil, cover with bladder and paper, and tie securely.

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.

Mushroom + white winetop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,765 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity).
White wine + vinegartop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,776 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Mushroom + milktop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,231 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).
Milk + white winetop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together929 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity).
Mushroom + vinegartop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,070 recipes

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