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Sauce

Mushroom Catsup

A preserved mushroom sauce made by boiling mushrooms, seasoning, and adding wine or beer, then bottling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Mushroom Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mushrooms

  1. Cut off the stalks and worm-eaten parts of the mushrooms and break them into small bits.

  2. Strew salt over the mushrooms, allowing 1 tablespoon for every quart.

  3. Let the salted mushrooms stand for 24 hours.

Make the ketchup

  1. Put the mushrooms into a saucepan.

  2. Boil gently for 45 minutes.

  3. Strain the mixture.

  4. Let it settle overnight.

  5. Pour off the clear liquid the next day.

  6. Add port wine or beer, mace, peppercorns, allspice, ginger, and cloves.

  7. Simmer for 20 minutes.

  8. Pour into bottles with spices evenly divided.

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 + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Ginger + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Mace + allspicetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

What each ingredient does

Broad flat mushrooms
Provide the main body and savory flavor of the ketchup once their liquid is drawn out.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the mushrooms and seasons them, concentrating their flavor before cooking.
Port wine or old strong beer
Adds depth, sweetness or bitterness, and acidity to the finished ketchup.

The step that matters

Salting and standing the mushrooms. Salt draws moisture out of the mushrooms through osmosis, which creates the liquid the ketchup is built on. Skipping or shortening the 24-hour rest yields less liquid and a weaker, less concentrated flavor.

Swap the mace

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

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

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