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Sauce

Mushroom Ketchup

A preserved mushroom sauce made by fermenting mushrooms with salt, spices, and liquor, then boiling and bottling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,620 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Mushroom Ketchup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mushrooms

  1. Choose fresh, full-grown mushroom caps, avoiding those picked in heavy rain.

  2. Layer mushrooms in a deep pan, sprinkling salt between layers.

  3. Let sit for a few hours.

  4. Break them up by hand.

  5. Store in a cool place for 3 days, stirring and mashing occasionally to extract juice.

Make the ketchup

  1. Measure the liquor without straining.

  2. Add spices according to the quantity.

  3. Transfer to a stone jar and cover tightly.

  4. Place in a saucepan of boiling water and boil for 3 hours.

  5. Pour contents into a clean stewpan and simmer gently for 30 minutes.

  6. Pour into a jug and let cool overnight.

Bottle and seal

  1. Strain into clean bottles without squeezing the mushrooms.

  2. Add a few drops of brandy to each pint of ketchup.

  3. Cork well and seal to exclude air.

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. Allspice + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,620 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Allspice + macetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

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

  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 and savoury flavour of the ketchup as they break down.
Coarse sea salt
Draws juice out of the mushrooms and helps preserve the mixture.
Mushroom liquor
Adds concentrated mushroom juice that gives the ketchup its liquid base and depth.
Cayenne pepper
Adds heat that sharpens the flavour and helps preserve the ketchup.
Ginger
Adds warm, aromatic pungency that rounds out the spiced flavour.

The step that matters

Strain without squeezing the mushrooms. Squeezing the solids forces cloudy particles and fibre into the liquid, making the ketchup murky and less clear. Letting it drip through gently keeps the finished sauce clear and smooth.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Clovefits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, pepper, allspice, ginger, brandy. 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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