Skip to main content
Sauce

Mushroom Catsup

A mushroom sauce made by crushing mushrooms, steeping with salt, stewing, straining, reducing with spices, and bottling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Mushroom Catsup

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Crush the largest and blackest mushrooms and mix with salt.

  2. Let sit for 24 hours.

Stew and strain

  1. Place the mixture in a deep jar and stew in a 350°F oven for 6 hours.

  2. Once cool, strain the mixture.

Reduce and bottle

  1. Boil the strained liquid with spices until reduced to half its original quantity.

  2. When cold, bottle in small bottles and seal carefully.

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

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Ginger + peppertop 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

Black mushrooms
Provide the main flavor and the liquid that is reduced into the ketchup.
Table salt
Draws moisture out of the mushrooms and helps preserve the mixture.
Cloves
Add warm, aromatic flavor that concentrates as the liquid reduces.
Black peppercorns
Add pungent, sharp aroma to the spiced liquid.
Ginger
Adds warm, lively aroma to the spiced liquid.
Mace
Adds a warm, nutmeg-like aroma to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Boil the strained liquid with spices until reduced to half. Boiling evaporates water and concentrates the flavors of the mushrooms and spices. Reducing to half gives the ketchup its body and intensity, and stopping too early leaves it thin and weakly flavored.

Swap the mace

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

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

More mushroom ketchup recipes

Sauce 4 See all 229 →

You might also like

Ginger SauceGinger Sauce12 recipesWine Sauce (for stewed fruit)Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)186 recipesCaper SauceCaper Sauce180 recipesBrown SauceBrown Sauce141 recipes