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Pickled Mushrooms

A pickled mushroom preparation using vinegar, salt, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Pickled Mushrooms

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean the small button mushrooms with a flannel and some vinegar.

  2. Place them in a dish and sprinkle with coarse sea salt to draw out the liquid.

  3. Once the liquid is drawn out, transfer the mushrooms to a kettle with their own liquid and enough vinegar to cover them.

Cook and bottle

  1. Add mace, cloves, and black pepper to taste.

  2. Boil gently for a few minutes, then bottle and cork tightly.

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. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Mushroom + clovetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,663 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Small button mushrooms
Form the main body of the pickle, absorbing the seasoned vinegar as they cook.
Vinegar
Acidity that preserves the mushrooms and gives the pickle its sharp flavour.
Coarse sea salt
Draws liquid out of the mushrooms before they are pickled, concentrating their flavour.

The step that matters

Boil gently for a few minutes. Boiling too hard or too long can toughen and shrink the mushrooms and drive off vinegar. A gentle simmer cooks them through while keeping them tender and intact.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, vinegar, clove, 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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