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Sauce

Mushroom Catsup

A fermented mushroom sauce made by steeping sliced mushrooms with spices and boiling 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. Place sliced mushrooms in a stone crock and sprinkle with coarse sea salt.

  2. Cover and let stand for 24 hours, stirring frequently.

  3. Strain the mixture through a coarse cloth.

Spice and boil

  1. For each quart of mushroom liquid, add allspice, peppercorns, cloves, mace, and ginger.

  2. Boil for 1.5 hours.

Bottle

  1. When cool, strain again and bottle in small bottles, sealing securely.

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. Clove + gingertop 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
Provide the bulk of the liquid and the savoury, umami flavour of the ketchup.
Coarse sea salt
Draws liquid out of the mushrooms and seasons the mixture while it stands.
Whole peppercorns
Add sharp, pungent heat that gives the ketchup its warm background.

The step that matters

Salting and standing the mushrooms. Salt draws water out of the mushrooms by osmosis, creating the liquor the ketchup is built on. Stirring during the 24 hours helps the salt dissolve and draw out liquid evenly, so the mushrooms do not spoil on the surface.

Swap the mace

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

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

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