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Sauce

Mushroom Ketchup, Another Way

A preserved mushroom sauce made by simmering mushrooms with spices, then bottling and aging.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,038 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Mushroom Ketchup, Another Way

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mushrooms

  1. Clean the mushrooms and remove any worm-eaten parts.

  2. Add the mushrooms and salt to a stew-pan and set over low heat.

  3. Allow the mushrooms to produce liquor, then strain it.

Make the ketchup

  1. Add shallots, garlic, pepper, ginger, mace, cloves, and bay leaves to the liquor.

  2. Boil and skim the mixture well.

  3. Once cooled, bottle and cork tightly.

  4. After two months, reboil with fresh spices and a stick of horseradish.

  5. Store in a cool place; it will keep for a year.

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. Clove + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Mushroom + shallottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,982 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Shallot + garlictop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,000 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Shallot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,677 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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 and savoury flavour, releasing liquor as they cook with salt.
Salt
Draws moisture out of the mushrooms, helping them release their liquor and preserving the ketchup.
Shallots
Add savoury depth and aromatic sweetness to the liquor as it simmers.
Garlic
Adds pungent aroma and savoury flavour that mellows during long simmering.
Black pepper
Adds sharp, warm heat and aroma to the ketchup.

The step that matters

Boil and skim the mixture well. Boiling heats the liquor enough to halt spoilage-causing microbes, and skimming removes the foam and solids that would otherwise cloud the ketchup and spoil it during storage.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Turmericfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, shallot, clove, garlic, pepper, 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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