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Sauce

Mushroom Catsup

A fermented mushroom sauce seasoned with allspice, ginger, cloves, mace, peppercorns, and sea salt.

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 and rest

  1. Wipe the mushrooms and layer them in an earthen dish, sprinkling each layer with coarse sea salt.

  2. Cover with a damp cloth and let stand for 36 hours in a warm place.

  3. Strain the mixture through a coarse sieve.

Simmer with spices

  1. In a kettle, combine 1 quart of the mushroom juice with 1 ounce of peppercorns and boil for 30 minutes.

  2. Add the allspice, ginger, cloves, and mace, then simmer gently for 15 minutes.

  3. Remove from heat and let cool.

Strain and bottle

  1. Once cold, strain again and seal in glass bottles.

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. Ginger + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Allspice + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,620 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Allspice + macetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

What each ingredient does

Freshly-gathered mushrooms
Release their juice over the salting period, which becomes the liquid base of the ketchup.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out of the mushrooms and creates a salty environment that slows spoilage during standing.
Peppercorns
Add a sharp, pungent bite and aromatic depth to the simmered liquid.
Ginger root
Contributes a warm, fresh aroma and spicy flavor to the liquid.
Whole allspice
Adds warm, aromatic notes that round out the savory flavor.
Whole cloves
Provide a strong, sweet-spicy aroma that stands out in the simmered liquid.

The step that matters

Layering the mushrooms with salt. Salt must coat every layer. It draws water out of the mushrooms by osmosis and creates a briny environment that slows spoilage during the long 36-hour standing period. Uneven salting can let the mixture spoil before the juice is extracted.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against allspice, ginger, clove, mushroom. 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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