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To Pickle Mushrooms

A method for preserving small button mushrooms in a vinegar brine with mace, cloves, nutmeg, and mutton fat.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and nutmeg 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 ↓

To Pickle Mushrooms

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mushrooms

  1. Cut the stems off the mushrooms.

  2. Rub the skins with a flannel dipped in salt.

  3. Soak the mushrooms in a mixture of milk and water.

  4. Drain the mushrooms.

  5. Place the mushrooms in a stew pan. Sprinkle the mushrooms with salt. Cover the stew pan.

  6. Heat over a gentle stove for 5 minutes.

  7. Drain the mushrooms on a coarse cloth until cold.

Make the pickle

  1. Combine vinegar, salt, mace, cloves, and nutmeg in a cold still for the pickle. Cover the still with a wet cloth.

  2. Heat gently, tasting until the acid is gone.

Bottle and preserve

  1. In bottles, layer mushrooms with blades of mace and slices of nutmeg, then fill with pickle.

  2. Melt mutton fat, drain it, and pour over the mushrooms to preserve them.

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. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Mushroom + clovetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,663 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  5. Mushroom + muttontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together685 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Small button mushrooms
Form the main body of the pickle, absorbing the vinegar and seasoning as they are heated.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out of the mushrooms and seasons them before they are pickled.
Vinegar
Acidic liquid that preserves the mushrooms and gives the pickle its sharp flavour.
Mace
Adds a warm, aromatic spice flavour to the pickle and the bottled mushrooms.
Mutton fat
Forms a sealing layer over the mushrooms that helps keep them preserved.

The step that matters

Heat gently, tasting until the acid is gone. Heating the vinegar too hard or too long can drive off flavour and make the mushrooms tough, while stopping too early leaves them sharp. Tasting guides when the vinegar has mellowed enough.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, vinegar, clove, nutmeg, mutton. 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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