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Sauce

Mushroom Catsup

A preserved mushroom sauce made by salting, mashing, boiling with peppercorns, and storing in sealed jars.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and mace are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,189 recipes. Both carry methyleugenol, which smells clove, spice. The science ↓

Mushroom Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mushrooms

  1. Sprinkle the salt over the mushrooms in layers and let them stand for 12 hours.

  2. Mash the mushrooms finely and strain through a sieve.

Cook and settle

  1. Add the peppercorns to the mushroom mixture and boil covered for about 3 hours.

  2. Alternatively, place the mixture in a covered jar and set it in boiling water for the same duration.

  3. Pour the mixture into a jug and let it cool overnight.

  4. The next day, pour into another jug, leaving the sediment behind.

Bottle

  1. Cork and seal the jug.

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

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  2. Mushroom + allspicetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together717 recipes

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

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

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

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 savoury flavour of the ketchup.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out of the mushrooms and preserves the mixture.
Whole peppercorns
Add a warm, pungent spice aroma during the long simmer.

The step that matters

Salting the mushrooms in layers for 12 hours. Salt draws water out of the mushrooms through osmosis, creating a brine that extracts flavour and helps inhibit spoilage. Even layering ensures every mushroom is coated.

Swap the allspice

The recipe marks allspice as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mushroom, mace):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Clovefits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Allspicethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, mace. 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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