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Sauce

Mushroom Catsup

A fermented mushroom sauce made by macerating mushrooms, reducing the liquid, and seasoning with pepper, cayenne, mace, and salad oil.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Mushroom and mace are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,529 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Mushroom Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the liquor

  1. Macerate mushrooms with salt for three to four days.

  2. Strain and measure the liquid.

Reduce and season

  1. Boil it quickly until reduced by half.

  2. Add black pepper or cayenne and mace.

  3. Boil again until reduced.

Settle and bottle

  1. Pour the catsup into a clean jar.

  2. Cover with a cloth.

  3. Cool overnight.

  4. Gently pour off the sediment.

  5. Bottle the catsup.

  6. Add a teaspoon of salad oil to each bottle.

  7. Cork to exclude air.

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. Mushroom + macetop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,529 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

Mushrooms
Provide the bulk of the liquid and the savoury, umami flavour of the ketchup.
Salt
Draws moisture out of the mushrooms and preserves the liquid against spoilage.
Black peppercorns or cayenne
Add pungent heat that balances the savoury depth of the reduced liquid.
Mace
Adds a warm, aromatic spice note to the finished ketchup.

The step that matters

Boil until reduced by half. Boiling concentrates the liquid and drives off water, which is what gives the ketchup body and helps it keep. Boiling too briefly leaves it thin and more prone to spoiling.

“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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