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Mushroom Ketchup

A fermented mushroom condiment made by pickling mushrooms with salt, spices, and mushroom liquor.

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

Oven, in the book's wordsA cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mushrooms

  1. Gather mushrooms on a dry day.

  2. Trim the tips of the stalks without washing or peeling them.

  3. Rub off any dirt with a little salt.

  4. Place mushrooms in a large jar, sprinkling each layer with salt.

  5. Let them sit for 3 days, stirring at least 3 times daily.

Extract the liquor

  1. Cook the mushrooms gently on the stove or in a cool oven until the juice flows freely.

  2. Strain through a clean cloth without squeezing.

Make the ketchup

  1. Return the liquor to the jar, add allspice, ginger, cayenne, and mace.

  2. Place the jar in a saucepan of boiling water and cook gently for 3 hours.

  3. Strain 2 or 3 times through fine muslin when cold.

  4. Pour into small bottles, cork securely, and store for use.

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

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Ginger + macetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,152 recipes

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

  4. Mushroom + gingertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together867 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Mushroom + allspicetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together717 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Flap mushrooms
Provide the bulk of the juice that becomes the ketchup base.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out of the mushrooms and helps preserve the liquor.
Mushroom liquor
Adds concentrated mushroom flavor and body to the finished ketchup.
Ground ginger
Adds warm, aromatic spice notes to the ketchup.

The step that matters

Salting and resting the mushrooms. Salt must be layered evenly and the jar stirred during the three days so the mushrooms release juice without spoiling. Salt draws water out through osmosis, and even distribution prevents pockets of decay.

Swap the mace

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

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

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