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Mushroom Catsup

A preserved mushroom condiment made by salting, fermenting, and reducing mushroom liquid with spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Mushroom and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13,580 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Mushroom Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mushrooms

  1. Cut the ends of the stalks from the mushrooms and break them into a deep earthen pan.

  2. Strew ¾ pound of salt among the mushrooms, reserving some for the top.

  3. Let them stand for 3 to 4 days, stirring gently every 24 hours.

Make the ketchup

  1. Drain the liquid without pressing the mushrooms, then strain and measure it.

  2. Boil the liquid in a clean saucepan until reduced by half.

  3. For each quart of liquid, add ½ ounce of black pepper or ¼ teaspoon of cayenne and 1 drachm of mace.

  4. Pour the catsup into a clean jar, cover with a cloth, and keep in a cool place overnight.

Bottle and seal

  1. Pour gently from the sediment into small bottles, cork them well, and seal with rosin.

  2. Optionally, add 1 teaspoon of salad oil to each bottle before corking to exclude air.

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 + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  2. Pepper + macetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Mushroom + macetop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,529 recipes

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

Pepper and mace barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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 liquid that becomes the ketchup.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out of the mushrooms and preserves the liquid.
Black pepper
Adds sharp, aromatic heat to the finished ketchup.
Mace
Adds warm, aromatic spice flavour to the ketchup.

The step that matters

Draining without pressing. Pressing the mushrooms forces solids into the liquid, making the ketchup cloudy and gritty. Letting the liquid drain on its own keeps the final product clear once the sediment is left behind.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, pepper. 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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