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Sauce

Mushroom Catsup

A sauce made by boiling and reducing mushrooms with salt, garlic, and cloves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Mushroom and garlic are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,700 recipes. Both carry linalool, which smells floral, citrus. The science ↓

Mushroom Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mushrooms

  1. Remove the flaps from the mushroom stems and wash them.

  2. Add some coarse sea salt and crush the mushrooms.

  3. Boil the crushed mushrooms for some time.

  4. Strain the mixture through a cloth.

Reduce and bottle

  1. Return the strained liquid to the fire with additional salt, garlic cloves, and pounded cloves.

  2. Boil until reduced to less than half the original quantity.

  3. Bottle and cork the catsup well.

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. Mushroom + garlictop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,700 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  2. Garlic + clovetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,368 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  3. 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

Mushrooms
Provide the main body and savory flavor of the ketchup as their liquid is extracted and reduced.
Garlic cloves
Add pungent aroma and savory depth to the reduced liquid.
Cloves
Contribute warm, aromatic spice that flavors the reduced liquid.

The step that matters

Boil until reduced to less than half the original quantity. Long boiling evaporates water and concentrates flavor, and it also helps the ketchup keep well once bottled. Stopping early leaves a thin, less flavorful, less stable liquid.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Oreganofits better
  3. Cuminfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, garlic. 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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