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Mushroom Catchup

A preserved mushroom condiment made by crushing mushrooms, seasoning, baking, straining, and bottling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 Catchup

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the mushrooms

  1. Crush the mushrooms with your hands and mix in a handful of coarse sea salt for every peck of mushrooms. Let them stand overnight.

  2. Place the mushrooms in a stew-pan and bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for 12 hours.

  3. Strain the mixture through a fine sieve.

Season and reduce

  1. For every gallon of liquid, add 1 ounce each of cloves, Jamaica pepper, black pepper, and ginger, along with ½ pound of common salt.

  2. Heat the mixture on low until half the liquid evaporates.

Bottle and age

  1. Once cooled, bottle the catchup and seal with a bladder over the cork.

  2. After three months, boil it again with fresh spices.

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Pepper + gingertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,800 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Mushroom + clovetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,663 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  5. Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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, liquid and savoury flavour of the ketchup.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out of the mushrooms and helps begin their breakdown.
Common salt
Seasons the liquid and helps preserve it during long storage.
Cloves
Add a warm, aromatic spice flavour to the liquid.

The step that matters

Heat the mixture on low until half the liquid evaporates. Low heat concentrates the flavour gradually without scorching the sugars and proteins in the liquid, while reducing the volume so the ketchup keeps better.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, clove, pepper. 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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