Name: Mushroom Ketchup
Ingredients: largest broad mushrooms; coarse sea salt; Jamaica pepper; black pepper; mace; ginger; 1-2 cloves; mustard seed

Why it works: Ginger and clove 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

Ingredients

Directions

Break the mushrooms into an earthen pan.
Strew salt over the mushrooms and stir occasionally for three days.
Let the mixture stand for twelve days until a thick scum forms.
Strain the liquid and boil it with Jamaica pepper, black pepper, mace, ginger, cloves, and mustard seed.
Once cooled, bottle the mixture and seal with a bladder over the cork.
After three months, boil it again with some fresh spices to preserve it 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.

Ginger + clovetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together6,038 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together17,451 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together8,400 recipes

Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).
Clove + mustardtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,829 recipes

Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).
Pepper + gingertop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together6,800 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

Swap the mace

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

Allspicefits better
Turmericfits better
Thymefits better
Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, pepper, ginger, clove, mustard. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.