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Mushroom Catsup

A preserved mushroom condiment made with salt, cloves, ginger, pepper, and reduced liquid.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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

Prepare the mushrooms

  1. Wipe the mushrooms clean and crush them with your hands.

  2. Add a handful of coarse sea salt for every peck of mushrooms and let them stand overnight.

  3. Strain the mixture through a sieve and press out all the juice.

Season and reduce

  1. For every gallon of liquid, add 1 ounce each of cloves, Jamaica ginger, and black pepper, along with ½ pound of coarse sea salt.

  2. Set the mixture on a slow fire and boil until half the liquid is reduced.

Bottle

  1. Once cooled, transfer to an earthen vessel and bottle 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. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Ginger + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,800 recipes

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

  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

Full grown mushrooms
Provide the main liquid and savory, meaty flavor of the ketchup.
Coarse sea salt
Draws juice out of the mushrooms and seasons the liquid while helping preserve it.
Cloves
Add warm, pungent aroma to the liquid.
Jamaica ginger
Adds warm, spicy aroma and a peppery bite.
Black pepper
Adds sharp, pungent heat and aroma to the liquid.

The step that matters

Boil until half the liquid is reduced. Simmering on a slow fire concentrates the flavors of the mushroom juice and spices and thickens the liquid. Stopping too early leaves it thin and dilute, while pushing too hard can scorch the mixture.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Gingerthe original

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