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Mushroom Ketchup, Another Way

A preserved mushroom sauce made by boiling mushrooms with spices and preserving in jar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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

Prepare the mushrooms

  1. Clean the mushrooms and the skins of pickled mushrooms.

  2. Sprinkle a handful of coarse sea salt over them and place by a slow fire.

  3. Allow them to produce liquor, then strain it.

Make the ketchup

  1. Add 4 ounces of shallots, 2 cloves of garlic, black pepper, ginger, mace, cloves, and bay leaves to the liquor.

  2. Boil and skim well.

  3. Once cold, cork tightly.

Age and preserve

  1. After two months, boil again with a little fresh spice and a stick of horseradish to preserve for the 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.

  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

Mushrooms
Release their liquid under salt, forming the base liquor that carries the flavour.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the mushrooms and helps preserve the liquor against spoilage.
Shallots
Add savoury depth and aromatic sweetness to the liquor as it simmers.
Garlic
Adds pungent aromatic flavour that mellows during long storage.
Horseradish
Adds sharp, pungent aroma that helps preserve the ketchup when reboiled.

The step that matters

Boil and skim well. Boiling coagulates proteins and brings impurities to the surface, which must be skimmed off. Leaving them in can cloud the liquor and encourage spoilage during long storage.

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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