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Sauce

Mushroom Catsup

A preserved mushroom sauce made by drying, salting, and boiling with spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 Catsup

Oven, in the book's wordsA very cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

Salt the mushrooms

  1. Break the mushrooms into a deep earthen pan.

  2. Strew the salt among the mushrooms and cover with a cloth or paper.

  3. Place in a cool oven overnight.

  4. The next day, strain off the liquid and measure it.

Make the ketchup

  1. Boil the liquid for 15 minutes.

  2. For each quart of liquid, add black pepper, allspice, ginger, and mace.

  3. Boil the mixture for an additional 20 minutes.

Bottle and seal

  1. Bottle the catsup.

  2. Cork the bottle well.

  3. Dip the necks in melted rosin.

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

Large mushrooms
Provide the main body and liquid that the ketchup is built from.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out of the mushrooms and helps preserve the liquid.
Black pepper
Adds sharp, pungent heat that balances the savory mushroom flavor.
Allspice
Adds warm, aromatic spice notes to the liquid.
Ginger
Adds bright, aromatic spice that lifts the flavor.
Mace
Adds a delicate, warm aroma to the finished ketchup.

The step that matters

Overnight salting in a cool oven. The salt must draw out the mushroom liquid gradually at low heat. Too much heat can cook the mushrooms before the liquid releases, and the mixture can spoil if left uncovered or warm.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, pepper, 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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