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Mushroom Catsup

A fermented mushroom-based ketchup made by layering mushrooms, salting, pressing, and boiling with spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and clove 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

Salt the mushrooms

  1. Wash and cut the mushrooms into 2 to 4 pieces.

  2. Layer the mushrooms in a wide, flat jar or crock, sprinkling each layer with salt.

  3. Let them stand for 24 hours.

  4. Press out the juice and bottle it, then return the mushrooms to the jar.

  5. After another 24 hours, press the mushrooms again and bottle the juice.

  6. Repeat this process one more time.

Make and bottle the ketchup

  1. Combine all the extracted juice in a pot.

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

  3. Boil the mixture and skim off any scum that rises.

  4. Bottle the catsup when cool, adding 2 cloves and 1 peppercorn to each bottle.

  5. Cork and seal the bottles, then store in a dry 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. Allspice + clovetop 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

Large fresh mushrooms
Provide the main body and the savory juice that becomes the ketchup.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out of the mushrooms, releasing the juice and preserving the mixture.

The step that matters

Salting and pressing the mushrooms over three days. Salt pulls water out of the mushroom cells through osmosis, so the juice is extracted gradually. Pressing out the juice at each stage and repeating it captures most of the liquid and flavor before the mushrooms are discarded.

Swap the allspice

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

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

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