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Mushroom Catsup

A fermented mushroom sauce made by pressing mushrooms and mixing the juice with spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Mushroom Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

Salt the mushrooms

  1. Wash and cut the mushrooms into 2 to 4 pieces.

  2. Layer the mushrooms in a wide, flat jar or crock, sprinkling each layer with coarse sea salt.

  3. Let them stand for 24 hours.

  4. Press out the juice and bottle it, then return the mushrooms to the jar.

  5. After another 24 hours, press the mushrooms again and bottle the juice.

  6. Repeat this process one more time.

Make and bottle the ketchup

  1. Mix all the extracted juice together and add black pepper, allspice, and pounded cloves.

  2. Boil the mixture and skim off any scum that rises.

  3. Once cool, bottle the catsup, adding 2 cloves and a peppercorn to each bottle.

  4. Cork and seal the bottles, then store 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. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

  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

Large fresh mushrooms
Provide the bulk of the juice that becomes the ketchup's body and savory flavor.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out of the mushrooms through osmosis, releasing the juice and preserving the mixture.
Allspice
Adds warm, aromatic spice notes to the extracted mushroom juice.
Cloves
Add pungent, warm aromatic flavor to the finished ketchup.

The step that matters

Skim the mixture while boiling. Scum that rises during boiling consists of coagulated proteins and impurities; removing it keeps the finished ketchup clear and free of off flavors.

Swap the allspice

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

  1. Thymefits about as well
  2. Allspicethe original
  3. Marjoramfits about as well
  4. Nutmegfits less well

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