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Sauce

Mushroom Ketchup

A preserved mushroom condiment made by simmering mushrooms with spices and salt, then cooling and storing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mushroom liquid

  1. Place the mushrooms in a stew-pan and sprinkle with salt.

  2. Set the pan over low heat until the mushrooms release their liquid.

  3. Strain the liquid and return it to the pan.

Season and boil

  1. Add shallots, garlic, pepper, ginger, mace, cloves, and bay leaves.

  2. Boil and skim the mixture well.

Store and reboil

  1. Let it cool, then cork it tightly.

  2. After two months, reboil with fresh spices and horseradish.

  3. Cork again and it will keep for a 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, which becomes the base of the ketchup.
Sea salt
Draws moisture out of the mushrooms and helps preserve the liquid.
Shallots
Add savory, aromatic flavor to the liquid as it simmers.
Garlic
Adds pungent aroma and savory depth to the reduced liquid.
Horseradish
Adds a sharp, pungent bite when added at the reboiling stage.

The step that matters

Boil and skim the mixture well. Boiling concentrates the flavor and drives off excess water, while skimming removes foam and impurities that would otherwise cloud the liquid and spoil its clarity and keeping quality.

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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