Skip to main content
Main

Husbboom Catsup

A mushroom-based catsup made by salting, fermenting, and reducing mushroom liquid with spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Husbboom Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

Salt the mushrooms

  1. Cut the ends off the mushroom stalks and break them into a deep earthen pan.

  2. Strew ¾ pound of salt among the mushrooms, reserving some for the top.

  3. Let the mushrooms stand for 3 to 4 days, stirring gently once every 24 hours.

  4. Drain off the liquid without pressing the mushrooms and strain it.

Make the catsup

  1. Measure the liquid and boil it quickly in a clean stewpan until reduced by half.

  2. For each quart of liquid, add ½ ounce of black pepper or ¼ teaspoon of cayenne and 1 drachm of mace.

  3. Pour the catsup into a clean jug or jar, cover with a folded cloth, and keep in a cool place overnight.

  4. Gently pour off the sediment and transfer the catsup into small bottles.

Bottle and store

  1. Cork the bottles well and optionally add a teaspoon of salt oil to each before sealing to exclude air.

  2. Store the bottles in a dry, 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).

  2. Pepper + macetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Mushroom + macetop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,529 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

Pepper and mace barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Fresh mushrooms
Form the bulk of the catsup, releasing the flavourful liquid that is strained and reduced.
Coarse sea salt
Draws liquid out of the mushrooms and preserves the mixture during the multi-day standing.
Black pepper
Adds pungent, warm spice flavour to the reduced liquid.
Mace
Adds a warm, aromatic spice note to the catsup.

The step that matters

Boil the liquid quickly until reduced by half. Reducing concentrates the flavour of the mushroom liquid and helps it keep. Boiling quickly limits the time the liquid spends at a simmer where it can darken or lose fresh flavour.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Macethe 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.

You might also like

Mushroom SoupMushroom Soup60 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes