Skip to main content
Main

Mushroom Catchup

A preserved mushroom condiment made by layering mushrooms, salt, pepper, and allspice, then mashing and aging.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,395 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Mushroom Catchup

Ingredients

Directions

Salt the mushrooms

  1. Layer fresh mushrooms in a deep earthen pan, sprinkling each layer with coarse sea salt.

  2. Let the mushrooms sit for 2-3 hours until the salt penetrates and softens them.

  3. Pound the mushrooms in a mortar or mash them with your hands.

Ferment and seal

  1. Let the mixture sit for 2 days, stirring and mashing daily.

  2. Pour the mixture into a stone jar and add 1½ ounces of whole black pepper and ½ ounce of allspice for each quart.

  3. Seal the jar tightly.

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. Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

  3. Mushroom + allspicetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together717 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

Fresh mushrooms
Provide the bulk of the liquid and flavour that the ketchup is built from.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out of the mushrooms and preserves the mixture during the resting period.
Whole black pepper
Adds sharp, aromatic spice that flavours the ketchup as it rests.
Allspice
Adds warm, aromatic spice notes to the finished ketchup.

The step that matters

Layering the salt evenly. Salt draws water out of the mushrooms and keeps spoilage bacteria in check during the long rest. Uneven salting leaves pockets where the mixture can spoil before the salt has drawn out enough liquid.

Swap the allspice

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Allspicethe 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.

More mushroom ketchup recipes

Sauce 4 See all 229 →

You might also like

Mushroom SoupMushroom Soup60 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes