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Mushroom Catsup

A preserved mushroom-based condiment made by crushing mushrooms, salting, macerating, boiling with spices, and bottling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and ginger 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 ↓

Mushroom Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Salt the mushrooms

  1. Crush the mushrooms in a vessel and mix in a large handful of coarse sea salt for each peck of mushrooms.

  2. Let the mixture sit for two days.

Macerate and press

  1. Transfer the mixture to an earthenware crock and macerate in a cool oven at 300°F (150°C) for six hours.

  2. Once cooled, press out the juice and boil it with the spices listed.

Reduce and bottle

  1. Simmer and skim until no more filth rises, then let it sit for one to two days.

  2. Boil again, keeping it at boiling point until reduced to half its original quantity.

  3. Once cooled, bottle the catsup, cork it firmly, and seal it.

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

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Pepper + gingertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,800 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Large black flap mushrooms
Provide the main body and savoury flavour of the ketchup once their juice is extracted.
Coarse sea salt
Draws liquid out of the mushrooms and helps preserve the mixture.
Cloves
Add warm, aromatic spice flavour to the boiled juice.
Black pepper
Adds sharp, pungent heat that balances the savoury juice.

The step that matters

Skimming during the first simmer. Impurities that rise to the surface can spoil the flavour and keeping quality of the ketchup, so they must be removed thoroughly while the juice simmers. Skimming until the surface is clear keeps the finished ketchup clean-tasting and stable.

Swap the mace

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

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

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