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To Pickle Mushrooms

A pickled mushroom preparation using milk, water, vinegar, mace, white pepper, and olive oil.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Mushroom and olive are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,571 recipes. Both carry trans,trans-2,4-nonadienal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

To Pickle Mushrooms

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Combine milk and water in a bowl.

  2. Wipe the mushrooms with a clean cloth.

  3. Soak the mushrooms in spring water and sprinkle with salt.

Cook and dry

  1. Boil the mushrooms for 4 minutes, then drain them.

  2. Cover the mushrooms with two cloths to dry them well.

Pickle and bottle

  1. Prepare a pickle with vinegar, mace, and a little white pepper.

  2. Once the pickle is cold, pour it over the mushrooms in small glass bottles.

  3. Add 1 teaspoon of olive oil on top, cork the bottles, and seal with leather.

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 + olivetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,571 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans,trans-2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  2. Mace + white peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,695 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  3. Vinegar + olivetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,297 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

  4. Mushroom + milktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,231 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  5. Milk + olivetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,828 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Button mushrooms
The main ingredient, which keeps its firm texture after brief boiling and pickling.
Double distilled vinegar
Provides the sharp acidity that gives the pickle its tangy flavor.
Mace
Adds a warm, aromatic spice flavor to the pickle.
Olive oil
Forms a fat layer on top of the pickle that helps seal the bottles.

The step that matters

Let the pickle cool completely before pouring. Hot pickle would keep cooking the mushrooms and soften their texture, so waiting for it to cool keeps them firm.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mushroom, milk, vinegar, mace, olive):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Clovefits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, milk, vinegar, mace, olive. 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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