Skip to main content
Sauce

Mushroom Catsup

A preserved mushroom condiment made with crushed mushrooms, salt, mace, ginger, Jamaica pepper, black peppercorns, cloves, and salt, boiled and bottled.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 the mushrooms

  1. Crush the largest and blackest mushrooms you can find.

  2. Add 1 handful of table salt to the mushrooms and let them sit for 24 hours.

  3. Place the mushrooms in a deep jar and put it in a 350°F (175°C) oven for 6 hours.

  4. Once cool, strain the mixture well.

Spice and reduce

  1. Boil the liquid with the spices: 1 oz mace, 1 oz ginger, 1 oz Jamaica pepper, 1 oz black peppercorns, 1 oz cloves, and 8 oz table salt.

  2. Let it boil slowly until reduced to half its original quantity.

Bottle

  1. When cold, bottle it 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 body of flavour and liquid for the ketchup.
Table salt
Draws moisture out of the mushrooms and helps preserve the liquid.
Mace
Adds a warm, aromatic spice note to the liquid.
Black peppercorns
Contribute sharp, pungent heat and aroma as the liquid is spiced.

The step that matters

Slow reduction to half. Boiling slowly and reducing the liquid to half concentrates the flavour and thickens the ketchup. Boiling too hard can scorch the spices and darken the flavour, so keep the heat gentle and watch the volume.

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