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Sauce

Mushroom Catchup

A sauce made from boiled mushrooms, garlic, cloves, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Mushroom and garlic are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,700 recipes. Both carry linalool, which smells floral, citrus. The science ↓

Mushroom Catchup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash and crush the mushroom flaps.

  2. Boil the mushrooms for 3 hours.

  3. Strain the liquid through a cloth.

Season and reduce

  1. Put the liquid in a pot with salt, garlic, and cloves.

  2. Boil until the quantity is reduced by half.

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 + garlictop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,700 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  2. Clove + garlictop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,368 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

Mushroom flaps
Provide the main flavour and liquid that becomes the ketchup base.
Garlic
Adds pungent aroma and savoury depth to the finished ketchup.
Cloves
Add warm, aromatic spice notes that carry through the reduction.

The step that matters

Boil until the quantity is reduced by half. Reducing concentrates the liquid's flavour and thickens it. Stopping too early leaves the ketchup thin and weak, while over-reducing can make it overly salty and intense.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Oreganofits better
  3. Cuminfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, garlic. 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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