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Mushroom Ketchup

A fermented mushroom sauce made by boiling mushrooms with salt, pepper, mace, and optional salad oil.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Mushroom and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13,580 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Mushroom Ketchup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mushrooms

  1. Select good-sized mushrooms and ensure they are not worm-eaten.

  2. Cut the ends of the stems off and wipe the mushrooms carefully.

  3. Break the mushrooms in a pan.

  4. Sprinkle salt over the mushrooms.

  5. Place the largest portion on top.

  6. Stir the mixture daily for three days.

Make the ketchup

  1. Strain the liquid without applying pressure.

  2. Measure the liquid.

  3. Boil the liquid with black pepper and mace until it is reduced to a little more than half.

  4. Pour the liquid into a clean jug.

  5. Cover the jug with a folded cloth.

  6. Leave the jug until the next day.

Bottle

  1. Pour the liquid into small bottles, cork, and seal.

  2. Optionally, add a little salad oil to exclude air.

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. Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  2. Pepper + macetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Mushroom + macetop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,529 recipes

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

Pepper and mace barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Mushrooms
Provide the main body and savoury umami flavour of the ketchup as they break down in salt.
Salt
Draws moisture out of the mushrooms and preserves the liquid while it matures.
Whole black pepper
Adds warm, sharp aroma and light spice to the boiled liquid.
Mace
Adds a warm, aromatic spice note to the reduced liquid.

The step that matters

Strain without applying pressure. Pressing the mushrooms forces solids and cloudy particles into the liquid, which can make the ketchup murky and less stable during storage.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, pepper. 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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