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Sauce

Mushroom Catsup

A fermented mushroom sauce seasoned with pepper, mustard seed, cloves, ginger, and vinegar.

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

Salt the mushrooms

  1. Place full-grown mushrooms in a stone jar, layering them with coarse sea salt.

  2. Break up the mushrooms and cover the jar tightly.

  3. Let the mixture sit for ten days, stirring several times a day.

Make the ketchup

  1. Strain off the liquid and boil it.

  2. Season the liquid with whole pepper, mustard seed, cloves, and ginger, and boil for thirty minutes.

  3. Once cooled, bottle the mixture and add ½ cup of vinegar to each bottle.

  4. Cork the bottles tightly.

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. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Mustard + clovetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,829 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

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

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 body and savory flavor of the ketchup as they break down.
Coarse sea salt
Draws liquid out of the mushrooms and preserves the mixture during the long resting period.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and helps preserve the finished ketchup.

The step that matters

Layering the mushrooms with salt. Salt must be evenly layered so it draws out enough liquid and inhibits spoilage bacteria during the ten-day rest. Uneven salting can let the mixture spoil.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Mustardthe original

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