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To Pot Mushrooms

A preserved mushroom dish made by salting, stewing, layering with spices, and covering with melted lard.

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 ↓

To Pot Mushrooms

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean the mushrooms with a little coarse sea salt and a flannel, or cut out the fur and skin the tops if they are small.

  2. Place the mushrooms in a dish, sprinkle salt over them, and let them sit overnight to absorb the salt.

Cook and pot

  1. Put the mushrooms in a stewpan with their own liquid and stew gently until the liquid is evaporated.

  2. Transfer the mushrooms into small pots, adding a little ground mace, nutmeg, and pepper between layers.

  3. Press the mushrooms down firmly, and when cool, pour melted lard over them.

Store

  1. Store the pots in a dry place without covering.

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. Mace + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

Mace and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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, shrinking as their liquid evaporates during stewing.
Melted lard
Seals the surface of the packed mushrooms, adding fat and helping preserve them.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out of the mushrooms and seasons them before they are stewed.

The step that matters

Stewing until the liquid is evaporated. If the mushrooms are stewed too briefly, excess moisture stays in the pots and can spoil the preserve. Gentle cooking lets the liquid evaporate slowly so the mushrooms concentrate in flavour without scorching.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, 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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