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Mushroom Ketchup, Another Way

A preserved mushroom ketchup made by simmering mushrooms with salt, aromatics, and spices, then stored for up to a year.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Shallot and horseradish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 376 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Mushroom Ketchup, Another Way

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and salt

  1. Place a stew pan full of cleaned large-flap mushrooms, skins and fringe, into the pan.

  2. Add ½ cup of coarse sea salt and set over a slow fire.

Make the ketchup

  1. Allow the mushrooms to produce liquid, then strain the mixture.

  2. Add chopped shallots, minced garlic, black pepper, ginger, mace, cloves, and bay leaves.

  3. Boil and skim well.

Age and finish

  1. After two months, boil it again with a little fresh spice and a stick of horseradish.

  2. Store the ketchup for up to 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. Shallot + horseradishtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together376 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Clove + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Mushroom + shallottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,982 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Shallot + garlictop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,000 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Large-flap mushrooms
Provide the main liquid and savory, umami-rich body of the ketchup.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the mushrooms and preserves the liquid against spoilage.
Shallots
Add a mild onion-like sweetness and savory depth to the base.
Garlic
Adds pungent aroma that mellows during long cooking and aging.
Horseradish
Adds a sharp, pungent bite that brightens the finished ketchup.

The step that matters

Draw the liquid over a slow fire. Salt pulls water out of the mushroom cells by osmosis. Low, slow heat lets that liquid collect without scorching the mushrooms or making the flavour bitter.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, shallot, clove, garlic, 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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