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Mushroom Ketchup

A preserved mushroom sauce made by cooking mushrooms with spices and salt, then bottling and reboiling with horseradish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Shallot and horseradish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 376 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Mushroom Ketchup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean the mushrooms and place them in a stew-pan.

  2. Add a handful of coarse sea salt and cook over low heat until they release their liquid.

  3. Strain the liquid and return it to the pan.

Make the ketchup

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

  2. Boil and skim the mixture well.

  3. Once cooled, bottle and cork tightly.

Reboil and preserve

  1. After two months, reboil with fresh spices and horseradish to preserve 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. Shallot + horseradishtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together376 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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 of the ketchup as they release their liquid.
Coarse sea salt
Draws liquid out of the mushrooms and helps preserve the ketchup.
Shallots
Add a mild sharpness and savoury depth to the liquid.
Garlic
Adds pungent aroma and savoury depth to the liquid.
Horseradish
Adds a sharp, pungent aroma that supports the long-term preserving reboil.

The step that matters

Boil and skim the mixture well. Boiling kills spoilage microbes and skimming removes the foam and solids that would otherwise sour or spoil the liquid during storage.

Swap the mace

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

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

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