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To Make Ketchup

A mushroom-based ketchup made with salt, ginger, pepper, cloves, garlic, and sweet oil.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,038 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

To Make Ketchup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Combine mushrooms and coarse sea salt in a large bowl.

  2. Let them sit for 2 days.

  3. Strain the mushrooms.

Cook

  1. Boil them for 15 to 30 minutes.

  2. Skim off any foam.

  3. Add ginger, pepper, cloves.

  4. Boil them, except for the garlic.

  5. Let the mixture sit for 1 to 2 days.

Bottle and cover

  1. Bottle the mixture with sweet oil.

  2. Cover with perforated paper.

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. Ginger + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 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. Ginger + garlictop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,402 recipes

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

  4. Mushroom + garlictop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,700 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  5. Pepper + garlictop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,090 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Mushrooms
Form the bulk of the ketchup and supply its savory, earthy flavor.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out of the mushrooms and seasons the mixture.
Ginger
Adds warm, sharp aroma to the mixture.
Cloves
Adds warm, spiced aroma to the mixture.
Sweet oil
Adds fat and forms a protective layer over the bottled mixture.

The step that matters

Let the mushrooms sit with the salt for 2 days. Salt draws water out of the mushrooms through osmosis, softening them and concentrating flavor. Stopping early leaves them wet and less seasoned, so the later boiling has less to work with.

Swap the garlic

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

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Turmericfits better
  3. Cinnamonfits better
  4. Garlicthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, ginger, 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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