Why it works: Mushroom and ginger work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 867 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓
Mushroom Ketchup
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the mushrooms
Place mushrooms in a deep dish and sprinkle with coarse sea salt.
Let them sit for 24 hours.
Transfer mushrooms to a fine sieve and squeeze out the juice.
Make and bottle the ketchup
Pour the juice into a saucepan and add black peppercorns, Jamaica peppercorns, and sliced ginger.
Boil the mixture for 15 minutes, then let it cool.
Bottle the ketchup for use.
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.
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Mushroom + gingertop 12% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together867 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
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 savory umami flavor of the ketchup once their juice is extracted.
- Coarse sea salt
- Draws moisture out of the mushrooms through osmosis, producing the juice used for the ketchup.
- Black peppercorns
- Add sharp, pungent spice that gives the ketchup its warm background heat.
- Jamaica peppercorns
- Contribute aromatic, clove-like warmth that rounds out the spice profile.
- Sliced ginger
- Adds bright, aromatic pungency that balances the earthy mushroom flavor.
The step that matters
Squeezing the juice after salting. Salt must draw enough liquid out of the mushrooms over the full resting period. Squeezing thoroughly captures that juice, which is the base of the ketchup, so leftover liquid in the mushrooms means a weaker, less concentrated result.
“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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