Skip to main content
Main

Mushroom Catchup

A preserved mushroom sauce made by salting, fermenting, and simmering mushrooms with spices and Port wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 Catchup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mushrooms

  1. Cut off part of the stalk from the mushrooms.

  2. Wash and drain the mushrooms, then bruise them slightly in a mortar.

  3. Place the mushrooms in an earthen vessel and cover with salt.

  4. Let sit for 3-4 days.

Strain and cook the liquid

  1. Strain the mixture through a fine cloth.

  2. Pour the liquid into a saucepan and add Port wine, allspice, cloves, mace, and pepper.

  3. Boil for 45 minutes, then skim and strain again.

Bottle

  1. Once cooled, transfer to small bottles and seal tightly.

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 + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Allspice + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 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 main body of flavour and the liquid released during salting.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out of the mushrooms and preserves the mixture during the long rest.
Port wine
Adds sweetness and depth that rounds out the savoury mushroom liquid.

The step that matters

Boil for 45 minutes, then skim and strain again. Boiling concentrates the liquid and drives off raw mushroom notes, while skimming removes foam and particles that would otherwise cloud the ketchup and spoil its clarity.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, port wine, allspice, clove, pepper. 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.

More mushroom ketchup recipes

Sauce 4 See all 229 →

You might also like

Mushroom SoupMushroom Soup60 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes