Name: To Make Mushroom Catchup
Ingredients: 2 pecks of fresh mushroom flaps; 2 handfuls of coarse sea salt; 1.5 pounds of anchovies; 0.5 ounce of mace; 0.25 ounce of ground nutmeg; 2 ounces of black pepper; 0.25 ounce of cloves; 1 ounce of ginger; 1 teaspoon of cayenne

Why it works: Nutmeg and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

To Make Mushroom Catchup

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Salt the mushrooms

Break down the mushrooms by hand and mix with salt.
Let sit in a cool place overnight.
Clear off the liquid.

Boil and skim

Boil the liquid.
Skim the liquid well.
Let it stand until the next day.
If there are 2 quarts of liquid, clear it off again.

Spice and bottle

Add anchovies, mace, nutmeg, black pepper, cloves, ginger, and cayenne.
Boil all ingredients together.
Bottle the mixture the next day.

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.

Nutmeg + clovetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,686 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Clove + gingertop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together6,038 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,557 recipes

Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).
Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together17,451 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
Nutmeg + gingertop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,324 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Fresh mushroom flaps: Form the bulk of the liquid once salted and drawn down overnight.
Coarse sea salt: Draws moisture out of the mushrooms and helps preserve the liquid.
Anchovies: Add deep savory, umami flavor that rounds out the ketchup.
Black pepper: Adds sharp, pungent heat and aroma to the spiced liquid.

The step that matters

Skim the liquid well. Boiling draws foam and impurities to the surface, and removing them keeps the finished ketchup clear and clean-tasting.

Swap the mace

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

Cinnamonfits better
Allspicefits better
Cardamomfits better
Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, nutmeg, pepper, clove, 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.