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Sauce

Mushroom Catsup with Spice

A spiced mushroom sauce made by steeping, pounding, and simmering mushrooms with salt, pepper, and allspice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,395 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Mushroom Catsup with Spice

Ingredients

Directions

Salt the mushrooms

  1. Layer mushrooms in a deep earthen pan.

  2. Sprinkle each layer with salt.

  3. Let them stand for 2-3 hours until softened.

  4. Pound the mushrooms in a mortar.

  5. Break them with your hands.

  6. Wash them well once or twice a day for 2 days.

Flavour and boil down

  1. Pour into a stone jar.

  2. Add black pepper and allspice.

  3. Seal the jar tightly.

  4. Place it in a saucepan of boiling water.

  5. Boil for at least 2 hours.

  6. Remove the jar.

  7. Strain the juice through a fine sieve into a clean saucepan.

  8. Boil the juice gently on low heat for 30 minutes.

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. Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Mushroom + allspicetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together717 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

Full-grown fresh mushrooms
Provide the main body and savory flavour of the ketchup once softened and extracted.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out of the mushrooms and softens them while helping preserve the mixture.
Whole black pepper
Adds a sharp, pungent spice note that stays through the long cooking.
Allspice
Adds warm, aromatic spice notes that complement the mushroom flavour.

The step that matters

Sealing the jar before the water bath. A tight seal keeps steam and liquid inside the jar so the mushrooms cook gently in their own juice. If the jar leaks, the water can enter and dilute the flavour.

Swap the allspice

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Allspicethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, 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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