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Mushrooms

A pickled mushroom recipe with salt, spices, sherry, vinegar, and oil.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Mushrooms

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mushrooms

  1. Cut off the roots of the mushrooms and clean them with a flannel cloth and salt.

  2. In a jar, combine the mushrooms with salt, ginger, whole pepper, mace, bay leaf, lemon rind, and sherry.

  3. Cover the jar and heat it on the stove until it is just about to boil.

  4. Let it sit for a day or two until the mushrooms absorb the spices.

Pickle and bottle

  1. Cover the mushrooms with hot vinegar and heat again until it just boils.

  2. Remove from heat.

  3. Let it cool completely.

  4. Divide the mushrooms and spices into wide-mouthed bottles and fill with vinegar.

  5. Seal the bottles.

  6. Add a teaspoon of oil on top.

  7. Cork the bottles.

  8. Dip in resin for preservation.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Ginger + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

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

  3. Mushroom + sherrytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,176 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-methylphenol (smoky, clove).

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

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

  5. Lemon + almondtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Small white button mushrooms
Form the main body of the pickle, absorbing the spiced brine as they soften.
Sherry
Adds a mellow, aromatic sweetness that rounds out the sharp vinegar.
Vinegar
Acidity preserves the mushrooms and gives the pickle its tang.
Ginger
Contributes a warm, aromatic spice that flavours the mushrooms during soaking.

The step that matters

Let the mushrooms sit to absorb the spices. Mushrooms are porous and soak up flavour slowly, so resting them for a day or two lets the spices penetrate. Skipping or shortening this rest leaves the pickle bland and unevenly seasoned.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, ginger, pepper, lemon, sherry, vinegar, almond. 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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