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To Pickle Mushrooms

A pickled mushroom recipe using vinegar, spices, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 Pickle Mushrooms

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mushrooms

  1. Clean the mushrooms by cutting off the stems and wiping them with a damp cloth dipped in salt.

  2. Soak the cleaned mushrooms in spring water mixed with 1 tablespoon of salt, then drain and dry them with a soft cloth.

Pickle

  1. In a pot, combine the vinegar, 1 heaped teaspoon of salt, white pepper, ginger, cayenne, mace, and nutmeg.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil, then add the mushrooms and boil for 6 to 9 minutes until tender.

  3. If mushrooms vary in size, boil larger ones for 2 minutes before adding smaller ones.

  4. Transfer the mushrooms to small stone jars or warm wide-necked bottles, dividing the spices evenly among 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. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Ginger + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Mushroom + white winetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,765 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity).

  4. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Ginger + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,800 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Wild or meadow mushrooms
Form the main body of the pickle, becoming tender as they simmer in the spiced vinegar.
Pale white wine vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the mushrooms and gives the pickle its sharp flavour.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out of the mushrooms during cleaning and seasons them.

The step that matters

Boiling the mushrooms in the vinegar. Mushrooms of different sizes cook at different rates. Boiling larger ones for 2 minutes first lets them reach tenderness together with smaller ones, so none is undercooked or overcooked.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Clovefits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, white wine, vinegar, ginger, pepper, mace, nutmeg. 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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