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Mushroom Ketchup Another Way

A fermented mushroom ketchup made by simmering mushrooms with spices and salt, 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

  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.

Make the ketchup

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

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

  3. Boil and skim the mixture well.

  4. Once cooled, bottle the ketchup and seal tightly.

Mature and finish

  1. After two months, reboil with a little fresh spice and a stick of horseradish.

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

Large flap mushrooms
Provide the main bulk and liquor that becomes the base of the ketchup.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out of the mushrooms and helps preserve the liquor.
Shallots
Add savory, aromatic depth to the liquor.
Garlic
Adds pungent, savory aroma that mellows during boiling and storage.

The step that matters

Boil and skim the mixture well. Boiling brings the liquor to a rolling simmer that concentrates flavour and stabilises it for storage, while skimming removes the foam and coagulated proteins that would otherwise cloud the ketchup and can spoil it.

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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