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Mushroom Pickle

A pickled mushroom preserve made with salt, vinegar, spices, and rosin sealing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean the mushrooms thoroughly.

  2. Dissolve the salt in the vinegar.

  3. Add the mushrooms to the vinegar solution.

Cook and spice

  1. Boil the mixture for 15 minutes.

  2. Add black pepper, allspice, ginger, and mace.

  3. Boil for an additional 20 minutes.

Bottle and seal

  1. Let it cool completely before bottling.

  2. Cork the bottles 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 and take on flavor from the brine.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the brine and draws moisture out of the mushrooms, helping preserve them.
Vinegar
Provides the acidic liquid that preserves the mushrooms and gives the pickle its sharpness.
Black pepper
Adds pungent heat and aroma to the pickling liquid.
Allspice
Adds warm, aromatic spice notes to the brine.
Ginger
Adds aromatic warmth and a gently spicy note to the pickle.

The step that matters

Let it cool completely before bottling. Bottling hot pickle traps steam and heat, which can soften the mushrooms and encourage spoilage. Cooling fully before sealing helps the jars keep safely.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, vinegar, 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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