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Sauce

Mushroom Catsup

A mushroom-based sauce made by fermenting mushrooms with spices and extracting the liquid.

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. Clean fresh mushrooms and layer them with coarse sea salt in an earthen jar.

  2. Let them sit for 24 hours in a warm place.

  3. Press the mushrooms to extract the liquor.

Spice and simmer

  1. Cut the ginger root into small pieces.

  2. Measure the mushroom liquor and add the peppercorns.

  3. Simmer for 40 minutes.

  4. Add the allspice, ginger, cloves, and mace.

  5. Boil for 15 minutes.

Cool and bottle

  1. Remove from heat and let cool.

  2. Strain through a cloth.

  3. 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. 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

Mushrooms
Release liquor through salting, giving the ketchup its concentrated mushroom flavour.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out of the mushrooms and helps preserve the liquor.
Peppercorns
Add sharp, pungent heat that is extracted into the liquor during simmering.
Cloves
Contribute warm, aromatic spice flavour that infuses the liquor during boiling.

The step that matters

Simmering and boiling the spiced liquor. Simmering extracts flavour from the peppercorns and spices into the liquid, but overcooking can make the spices bitter and harsh. Boiling for the stated time concentrates the flavour while keeping it balanced.

Swap the mace

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

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

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