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Ketchup

A preserved mushroom condiment made by salting, bruising, simmering, and bottling the mushroom mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Ketchup

Ingredients

Directions

Salt the mushrooms

  1. Wipe the mushrooms with a clean cloth and break them into pieces in a large earthen pan.

  2. Add the coarse sea salt to the mushrooms and stir well two or three times a day until the salt dissolves and the mushrooms liquefy.

  3. Bruise any remaining bits and set the mixture over gentle heat to extract the flavor.

Strain and simmer

  1. Strain the hot liquid through a fine sieve and simmer it gently with the spices and aromatics.

  2. After simmering, strain the liquid into bottles and seal them with cork and bladder once cooled.

Preserve

  1. To preserve, boil the bottles again after three months with fresh spices and sliced horseradish.

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. Allspice + horseradishtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together654 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Allspice + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Horseradish + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,784 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  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

Mushrooms
Provide the main savory body and umami flavor of the ketchup.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the mushrooms and preserves the liquid while they break down.
Bay leaves
Add a subtle aromatic, herbal note to the simmered liquid.
Onion or shallots
Add aromatic sweetness and depth to the simmered liquid.

The step that matters

Salting and waiting until the mushrooms liquefy. Salt must fully dissolve and draw out the mushrooms' moisture so they break down into liquid. Stirring regularly keeps salt evenly distributed, reducing the risk of spoilage in uneven pockets.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, allspice, 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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