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Sauce

Mushroom Catsup

A preserved mushroom sauce made by mashing, straining, and thickening mushrooms with spices and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Mushroom Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mushrooms

  1. Wipe mushrooms with a damp cloth.

  2. Layer mushrooms in a large stone jar, sprinkling with salt.

  3. Let stand overnight.

Make the ketchup

  1. Mash the mushrooms and strain off the juice.

  2. Add black pepper, cloves, and allspice to the juice.

  3. Boil slowly in a preserve kettle until thick.

  4. Strain and thin with vinegar.

Bottle

  1. Bottle and seal.

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. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Mushroom + clovetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,663 recipes

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

  5. 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

Fresh mushrooms
Provide the main body and savory flavor of the ketchup as their juice is extracted and reduced.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out of the mushrooms, creating the juice that becomes the base of the ketchup.
Vinegar
Adds acidity and brightness, thinning the thickened ketchup and helping it keep.

The step that matters

Boil slowly until thick. Slow boiling reduces the mushroom juice gradually, concentrating its flavor and body. Boiling too hard can scorch the bottom of the kettle and darken or burn the flavor.

Swap the allspice

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

  1. Allspicethe original
  2. Thymefits about as well
  3. Marjoramfits about as well
  4. Tarragonfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, pepper, clove, vinegar. 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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