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Mushroom Ketchup

A preserved mushroom sauce made by fermenting, boiling, and straining mushrooms with salt, pepper, and allspice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,395 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Mushroom Ketchup

Ingredients

Directions

Salt the mushrooms

  1. Layer fresh mushrooms in a deep pan, sprinkling each layer with coarse sea salt.

  2. Let the mushrooms sit for 2–3 hours until the salt penetrates.

  3. Mash the mushrooms well.

  4. Stir the mashed mushrooms daily for 2 days.

Flavour and cook

  1. Pour the mixture into a stone jar.

  2. Add black pepper and allspice to the jar.

  3. Seal the jar.

  4. Place the sealed jar in a boiling water bath for at least 2 hours.

Strain and reduce

  1. Strain the juice through a fine sieve into a clean pan.

  2. Boil the strained juice gently for 30 minutes, or until reduced by half.

  3. Skim off any impurities.

  4. Pour the clarified juice into a clean jar.

  5. Seal the jar 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. Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

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

Full-grown mushrooms
Provide the main body and savoury umami flavour of the ketchup.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out of the mushrooms and preserves the mixture.
Whole black pepper
Adds sharp, pungent spice that rounds out the savoury flavour.
Allspice
Contributes warm, aromatic notes that deepen the ketchup's flavour.

The step that matters

Boiling the strained juice gently. Gentle boiling reduces the juice by evaporation and concentrates its flavour. Boiling too hard can cloud the liquid and scorch the sugars and proteins, giving a bitter taste.

Swap the allspice

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Allspicethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, 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.

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