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Sauce

Double Mushroom Catsup

A mushroom-based catsup made by salting, soaking, and simmering mushrooms with spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,800 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Double Mushroom Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

Salt and macerate

  1. Strew 3 ounces of coarse sea salt over 1 gallon of fresh mushrooms.

  2. Pour 1 quart of ready‑made catsup over the mushrooms and stir occasionally for 4 days.

  3. Drain the liquid from the mushrooms.

Simmer and season

  1. Boil the mushrooms for 15 minutes with 1 ounce of whole black pepper, 1½ teaspoons of ground mace, 1 ounce of ground ginger, and 3 to 4 grains of cayenne pepper.

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. Pepper + gingertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,800 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

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

  3. Mace + gingertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,152 recipes

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

  4. Mushroom + gingertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together867 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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
Form the bulk of the sauce and release their own liquid during salting.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out of the mushrooms and helps preserve them during the rest period.
Ready-made catsup
Adds tomato sweetness and acidity while the mushrooms steep over four days.
Whole black pepper
Contributes sharp, pungent heat that builds during boiling.
Ground ginger
Adds warm, aromatic spice to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Draining before boiling. Mushrooms held in salt and catsup release a large amount of liquid. Draining it off before the boil keeps the final sauce from becoming diluted and watery, and concentrates the flavour.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Turmericfits better
  2. Clovefits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

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