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Sauce

Mushroom Catchup

A preserved mushroom sauce made by salting, boiling, and spicing mushrooms.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,620 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Mushroom Catchup

Ingredients

Directions

Salt and steep

  1. Break the mushrooms into bits and place them in a stone jar.

  2. Add 1½ ounces of coarse sea salt for every quart of mushrooms.

  3. Let the mixture stand in a cool place for three days, stirring several times a day.

Extract the juice

  1. On the third day, heat the mixture slowly in a porcelain kettle.

  2. Once the juice flows freely (about half an hour), strain it through a fine sieve.

  3. Return the liquid to the fire and boil for twenty minutes.

Season and reduce

  1. Measure the liquid and add 1 ounce of ginger root, 1 blade of mace, 1 bay leaf, a pinch of cayenne, and 1 ounce each of allspice and black pepper for each quart.

  2. Boil down the mixture to half its quantity.

  3. Add 1 teaspoon of brandy for each half-pint.

Bottle

  1. Bottle, cork, and seal with wax or rosin.

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. Ginger + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,620 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Allspice + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Mace + allspicetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Ginger + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,800 recipes

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

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

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Toadstools (mushrooms)
Supply the main body and flavour of the ketchup as their juices are drawn out.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out of the mushrooms and helps preserve the liquid.
Black pepper
Adds sharp, pungent heat that balances the savoury mushroom flavour.
Allspice
Adds warm aromatic depth to the seasoned liquid.
Brandy
Adds alcohol that helps keep the finished ketchup from spoiling.

The step that matters

Boil down the mixture to half its quantity. Reducing concentrates the flavours and removes water, which helps the ketchup keep. Stopping early leaves it thin and more prone to spoiling.

Swap the mace

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

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

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