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Pickled Mushrooms

A pickled mushroom preparation using salt, spices, sugar, vinegar, and mutton fat, stored in sealed bottles.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Pickled Mushrooms

Oven, in the book's wordsA cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mushrooms

  1. Wash the mushrooms clean with a cloth dipped in salt water.

  2. Place them in a saucepan and sprinkle with a little salt.

  3. Boil the mushrooms three times in their own liquid.

  4. Drain the mushrooms in a sieve and spread them on a clean cloth to cool.

Make the pickle

  1. Once cool, pack them into wide‑mouthed bottles with whole mace, sliced nutmeg, and cloves.

  2. Boil sugar and vinegar with whole pepper, sliced ginger, and bay leaves for a few minutes.

  3. Strain the mixture and let it cool before pouring it over the mushrooms in the bottles.

Seal and store

  1. Fill the bottles with fried mutton fat, cork them, and seal with a bladder and leather.

  2. Store in a cool 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. Nutmeg + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Clove + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Nutmeg + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Mushrooms
Are the main ingredient, cooked and packed in the bottles to be preserved.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that gives the pickling liquid its sharp, preserving character.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar, giving the pickling liquid a sweeter taste.
Mutton fat (fried)
Forms a sealing layer over the mushrooms, keeping air away from the contents.

The step that matters

Boiling the mushrooms three times. Repeated boiling in their own liquid cooks the mushrooms through and drives off moisture, which helps them keep. Cooking them too little leaves moisture that can spoil the preserve.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Cardamomfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, nutmeg, clove, sugar, vinegar, pepper, 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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