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Mushroom Catchup

A preserved mushroom condiment made by fermenting and boiling mushrooms with spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and allspice 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 ↓

Mushroom Catchup

Ingredients

Directions

Salt and macerate

  1. Layer mushrooms in an earthen bowl, sprinkling each layer with coarse sea salt.

  2. Let sit in a cool, dry place for 6 hours, mixing and mashing them into small pieces.

  3. Cover with a towel and stir occasionally for 3 days.

Extract and infuse

  1. Drain the juice into an earthen jar.

  2. Add ginger, allspice, cayenne pepper, and ground mace to each quart of juice.

  3. Cover the jar tightly and place it in a saucepan with cold water.

  4. Bring to a boil and maintain boiling for 6 hours, adding boiling water as needed.

Simmer and bottle

  1. Pour the ketchup into a saucepan and boil slowly for 30 minutes, skimming well.

  2. Transfer to an earthen bowl and cool in a cool place.

  3. Once cold and clear, pour off the liquid without disturbing the sediment and bottle 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. Ginger + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,620 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Allspice + macetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,189 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 + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Mushrooms
Release the juice that forms the liquid base and supply the savoury body of the ketchup.
Ginger
Adds a warm, pungent aroma that rounds out the mushroom flavour.
Allspice
Contributes warm, aromatic spice notes to the flavour.
Cayenne pepper
Adds heat that sharpens the overall flavour.
Ground mace
Adds a delicate, nutmeg-like aroma to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Maintain the long boil in the water bath. The sealed jar must stay submerged at a steady boil for the full 6 hours, topping up with boiling water as it evaporates. Gentle, sustained heat draws out flavour from the mushroom juice and spices without the liquid reducing or scorching.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, ginger, allspice, 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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