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Mushroom Pickle

Pickled mushrooms preserved with salt, pepper, allspice, ginger, and mace, then sealed with rosin.

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

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean the mushrooms thoroughly.

  2. Dissolve the salt in water and soak the mushrooms for 15 minutes.

Cook

  1. In a pot, combine the mushrooms with the spices and enough water to cover them.

  2. Boil for 20 minutes.

  3. Let the mixture cool completely.

Bottle

  1. Transfer to bottles, cork them well, and seal the necks with 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
The main ingredient; their firm flesh holds its shape through the long boil.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out of the mushrooms and seasons them before cooking.
Black pepper
Adds sharp, pungent heat that flavours the cooking liquid.
Allspice
Contributes warm, clove-like aroma to the pickling liquid.
Ginger
Adds a bright, spicy aroma that lifts the earthy mushrooms.
Mace
Adds a delicate, nutmeg-like aroma to the cooked mushrooms.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool completely. Bottling hot liquid and steam into corked bottles builds pressure and can push corks out or loosen the seal. Cooling first keeps the seal secure.

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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