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Fish Ketchup

A preserved ketchup made from lobster meat, coral, cayenne pepper, salt, and sherry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Meat and lobster work together. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 909 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Fish Ketchup

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the meat from the lobster and pound the coral.

  2. Combine the lobster meat, pounded coral, cayenne, salt, and sherry in a mortar.

  3. Pound the mixture well and add more sherry as necessary.

Store and serve

  1. Store in bottles, ensuring no air is present to keep for up to 12 months.

  2. Use 3 to 4 tablespoons of ketchup heated in melted butter for serving.

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. Meat + lobstertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together909 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  2. Pepper + sherrytop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

  3. Meat + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,777 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Meat + sherrytop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together505 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).

  5. Lobster + sherrytop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together215 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Lobster meat
Provides the main body and savoury flavour of the ketchup.
Coral
Adds concentrated, rich lobster flavour and colour to the mixture.
Sherry
Adds acidity and aroma, and loosens the mixture to a pounded paste.
Cayenne pepper
Adds heat that sharpens the overall flavour.

The step that matters

Store with no air present. Air exposure lets the mixture oxidise and spoil, so filling bottles fully and sealing them is what allows the ketchup to keep for a long time.

“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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