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Pickled Mushrooms

Pickled mushrooms prepared by salting, seasoning, and vinegar preservation.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Mushroom and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13,580 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Pickled Mushrooms

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Rub the mushrooms with a piece of flannel and salt, then cut off the stalks.

  2. If large, remove the red inside and discard any black mushrooms.

Cook

  1. Place the mushrooms in a stewpan, sprinkle with salt, mace, and pepper, and shake over a clear fire until the liquid flows.

  2. Continue heating until the liquid dries up, then add enough vinegar to cover the mushrooms.

  3. Simmer for one minute, then store in stone jars.

Store

  1. Once cooled, cover with bladder and keep in a dry place.

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 + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  2. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

  3. Mace + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Vinegar + mushroomtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,070 recipes

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

  5. Mushroom + macetop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,529 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

Mace and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Young button mushrooms
Form the main body of the dish, absorbing the seasoning and vinegar as they are preserved.
Vinegar
Acidity that preserves the mushrooms and gives the pickle its sharp flavour.
Mace
Adds a warm, aromatic spice flavour to the mushrooms.
Ground pepper
Adds sharp, pungent heat and aroma to the pickling liquor.

The step that matters

Driving off the liquid before adding vinegar. Mushrooms release a lot of water when heated. Cooking until that liquid dries up concentrates the flavour and helps the mushrooms take up the vinegar rather than being diluted by it, which supports a stable pickle.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, mushroom, pepper. 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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