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Sauce

Mushroom Ketchup, Another Way

A preserved mushroom sauce made by simmering mushrooms, spices, and seasonings, then cooling and storing.

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, Another Way

Ingredients

Directions

Make the ketchup

  1. Place a stew-pan full of large-flap mushrooms and the skins and fringe of pickled mushrooms.

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

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

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

  5. Boil and skim well.

  6. Let it cool and then cork it tightly.

Age and finish

  1. In two months, boil it again 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. 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

Large-flap mushrooms
Provide the main body of flavour and liquid for the ketchup.
Shallots
Add savoury sweetness and aromatic depth as they cook down.
Garlic
Adds pungent aroma that mellows during cooking and storage.
Horseradish
Adds sharp pungency that gives the ketchup its bite.

The step that matters

Boil and skim well. Boiling concentrates the liquid and skimming removes foam and impurities that would otherwise cloud the ketchup and spoil its clean flavour before it is corked for keeping.

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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