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Mushroom Ketchup

A fermented mushroom condiment made by boiling mushrooms with spices and preserving the liquid.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,038 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Mushroom Ketchup

Ingredients

Directions

Salt the mushrooms

  1. Break the mushrooms into an earthen pan.

  2. Strew salt over the mushrooms and stir occasionally for three days.

  3. Let the mixture stand for twelve days until a thick scum forms.

Spice and bottle

  1. Strain the liquid and boil it with Jamaica pepper, black pepper, mace, ginger, cloves, and mustard seed.

  2. Once cooled, bottle the mixture and seal with a bladder over the cork.

  3. After three months, boil it again with fresh spices to preserve it 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. Ginger + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Clove + mustardtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,829 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Pepper + gingertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,800 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Largest broad mushrooms
Provide the main body and liquid that becomes the ketchup.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the mushrooms and preserves the mixture against spoilage.
Mustard seed
Adds pungent flavour to the spiced liquid.

The step that matters

Salting and standing the mushrooms. Salt must be stirred in evenly and the mixture given its full resting time. Salt draws moisture out of the mushrooms and inhibits spoilage microbes, so the long standing period is what lets the liquid develop and preserves it safely.

Swap the mace

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

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

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