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To Pickle Mushrooms

A method for pickling fresh button mushrooms in a vinegar brine with spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Mushroom and shallot are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,982 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

To Pickle Mushrooms

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pickling liquid

  1. Combine vinegar, whole white pepper, ginger, mace, shallots, and garlic in a pot.

  2. Boil the mixture for 10 minutes.

  3. Let the mixture cool.

Prepare and cook the mushrooms

  1. Peel fresh button mushrooms and wash the mushrooms in water.

  2. Strain the mushrooms.

  3. Add mushrooms, lemon juice, and salt to a stewpan and cover the stewpan.

  4. Heat until liquid is drawn from the mushrooms.

Pack and seal

  1. Transfer the mushrooms to jars.

  2. Cover the mushrooms with the pickling liquid.

  3. Seal the jars with bladder and white 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 + shallottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,982 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Shallot + garlictop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,000 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. White wine + mushroomtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,765 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity).

  4. Ginger + garlictop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,402 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Mushroom + garlictop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,700 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Fresh button mushrooms
Form the main body of the pickle and absorb the vinegar flavour as they sit.
Double distilled white wine vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the mushrooms and gives the pickle its sharp taste.
Juice of 1 lemon
Adds extra acidity and brightness to the mushrooms during cooking.
Coarse sea salt
Draws liquid out of the mushrooms and seasons them.
Shallots
Add savoury, mellow onion flavour to the pickling liquid.

The step that matters

Heating the mushrooms until liquid is drawn out. Heating with salt and lemon draws moisture out of the mushrooms; if they are overcooked they turn soft and rubbery, and if underheated they stay watery and may not pickle evenly.

Swap the white pepper

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against white wine, vinegar, mushroom, ginger, mace, shallot, garlic. 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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