Why it works: Allspice and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,536 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓
Mushroom Catsup
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the mushrooms
Select mushrooms carefully, ensuring they are full-grown and gathered in dry weather.
Layer mushrooms in a deep dish, sprinkling salt between layers.
Let the mushrooms sit for a few hours.
Break the mushrooms into pieces.
Extract the juice
Place the dish in a cool area for three days.
Stir and mash the mushrooms daily to extract juice.
After three days, measure the juice.
Add spices according to the measured quantity.
Transfer the mixture to a stone jar.
Cover the jar tightly.
Boil the jar in a kettle of water for three hours.
Simmer and bottle
Pour the mixture into a clean saucepan.
Simmer the sauce for half an hour.
Pour the sauce into a jug.
Let the sauce stand for at least twelve hours.
Strain the liquid into bottles. Avoid squeezing the mushrooms while straining.
Add brandy to each quart of liquid.
Cork the bottles tightly.
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.
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Allspice + cinnamontop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together5,536 recipes
Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
-
Ginger + cinnamontop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together6,380 recipes
Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
-
Allspice + gingertop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together2,620 recipes
Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
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Mushroom + gingertop 12% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together867 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
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Mushroom + brandytop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together206 recipes
Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Mushrooms
- Form the bulk of the sauce and release their liquid through salting and mashing.
- Coarse sea salt
- Draws juice out of the mushrooms and helps preserve the mixture.
- Allspice
- Adds warm, aromatic flavour to the sauce.
- Ginger
- Adds warm, pungent aroma and spice to the sauce.
- Cinnamon or mace
- Adds sweet, warm aroma that rounds out the spiced flavour.
- Brandy
- Adds alcohol that helps preserve the sauce and carries aroma.
The step that matters
Avoid squeezing the mushrooms while straining. Pressing the mushrooms pushes solids and cloudy particles through the strainer, making the sauce murky and less clear.
Swap the ginger
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mushroom, allspice, cinnamon, brandy):
- Clovefits better
- Nutmegfits better
- Gingerthe original
- Thymefits about as well
Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, allspice, cinnamon, brandy. 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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