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Sauce

Mushkoom Catsup

A sauce made by boiling mashed mushrooms with water, salt, and black pepper, then straining and bottling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Mushroom and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13,580 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Mushkoom Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

Salt and rest

  1. Layer mushrooms in a container, sprinkling salt over each layer.

  2. Let the mushrooms stand for four days.

  3. Mash the mushrooms finely.

Make the catsup

  1. In a stone jar, combine the mashed mushrooms with 1 quart of water and ⅔ teaspoon of black pepper.

  2. Boil the mixture in a water bath for two hours.

  3. Strain the mixture without squeezing.

  4. Boil the liquid.

  5. Let the liquid cool and settle.

Bottle and store

  1. Bottle, cork, and seal the catsup.

  2. Store the catsup in a cool place.

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 + 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

Mushrooms
Provide the bulk and savory flavor that the salted liquid is drawn from.
Black pepper
Adds a sharp aroma and mild heat to the seasoned liquid.

The step that matters

Strain the mixture without squeezing. Pressing the mashed mushrooms pushes fine solids and cloudy particles through the strainer, making the liquid murky and gritty. Letting it drip through on its own keeps the catsup clearer, and the later cooling and settling then leaves a clean sediment at the bottom.

“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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