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Mushroom Ketchup

A fermented mushroom sauce made with mushrooms, liquor, spices, anchovies, and port.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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

Oven, in the book's wordsA cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the liquor

  1. Let the mushrooms stand for three days, turning them occasionally with a wooden spoon.

  2. Drain the liquor without pressure.

  3. Simmer the drained liquor in a clean saucepan for 30 minutes.

  4. Strain the liquor.

  5. Add ¼ teaspoon mace, ¼ teaspoon powdered ginger, and ⅛ teaspoon cayenne for every pint.

  6. Simmer the mixture for another 30 minutes.

  7. Let it cool completely.

Bottle and seal

  1. Pour the clear liquor into dry quart bottles.

  2. Add 1 dessert spoon of brandy to each bottle.

  3. Cork the bottles securely.

  4. Seal the bottles to exclude air.

Make the second ketchup

  1. Sprinkle more salt on the leftover mushrooms.

  2. Place the salted mushrooms in a cool oven overnight.

  3. Press the juice from the mushrooms.

  4. Boil the pressed juice with the sediment.

  5. Add ¼ ounce each of black pepper, Jamaica pepper, cloves, bruised ginger, and 3 chopped anchovies.

  6. Add 1 spoonful of port for every quart.

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. Ginger + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,800 recipes

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

  5. Mushroom + clovetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,663 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

What each ingredient does

Mushrooms
Long salting and standing draws out their liquor, which becomes the base of the ketchup.
Mushroom liquor
Concentrated mushroom juice that supplies the main savoury flavour and body of the ketchup.
Anchovies
Add concentrated savoury depth, rounding out the umami flavour of the mushrooms.
Brandy
Alcohol that adds aroma and helps preserve the bottled ketchup.

The step that matters

Drain the liquor without pressure. Squeezing the mushrooms forces out cloudy solids and bitter juices, which make the finished ketchup murky and harder to keep. Gentle draining keeps the liquid clear.

Swap the mace

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

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

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