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Mushroom Pickle

A pickled mushroom preserve made by salting, brining, boiling, and sealing in bottles.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,620 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Mushroom Pickle

Oven, in the book's wordsA very cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mushrooms

  1. Clean the mushrooms and layer them in a pan with the salt.

  2. Cover with a cloth or paper and let sit in a cool oven overnight.

  3. The next day, strain the liquid and measure it.

Make the pickle liquid

  1. Boil the liquid for 15 minutes.

  2. For each quart of liquid, add the black pepper, allspice, ginger, and mace.

  3. Boil the mixture for an additional 20 minutes.

Bottle and seal

  1. Once completely cool, pour into bottles, cork them well, and dip the necks in melted rosin.

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. Allspice + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,620 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Allspice + macetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Pepper + gingertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,800 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Mushrooms
Form the bulk of the pickle, softening as they draw out liquid under salt.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out of the mushrooms and preserves them through the overnight rest.
Black pepper
Adds sharp, pungent heat that flavors the spiced liquid.
Allspice
Contributes warm, clove-like aroma to the pickling liquid.
Ginger
Adds warm, pungent aroma and a slight sharpness to the liquid.
Mace
Adds a delicate, nutmeg-like aroma to the spiced liquid.

The step that matters

Boiling the strained liquid before adding spices. Boiling concentrates the strained liquid and reduces its water content, so the flavor is stronger and the pickle keeps better. Boiling the spices afterward extracts their aromas into the liquid.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, pepper, allspice, 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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