Skip to main content
Main

Mushroom Ketchup, Another Way

A preserved mushroom sauce made by simmering mushrooms, pickled skins, and spices, then storing for up to a year.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Clove and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,038 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Mushroom Ketchup, Another Way

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mushroom liquor

  1. Place the mushrooms and pickled skins in a stew-pan.

  2. Add the salt and set over a slow fire.

  3. Strain the liquid produced.

Spice and boil

  1. Add shallots, garlic, pepper, ginger, mace, cloves, and bay leaves to the liquid.

  2. Boil and skim well.

Store and re-boil

  1. When cold, cork tightly.

  2. After two months, boil again with fresh spices and a stick of horseradish.

  3. This will keep for 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. Clove + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Shallot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,677 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Large-flap mushrooms
Release their liquid and rich savoury flavour when salted and heated slowly.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out of the mushrooms and helps preserve the finished ketchup.
Shallots
Add savoury, aromatic depth to the liquid as it cooks.
Garlic
Adds pungent aroma and savoury depth to the liquid.

The step that matters

Skimming while boiling. Boiling the strained liquid releases foam and impurities that rise to the surface. Skimming them off keeps the ketchup clear and clean-tasting, which matters because it will be stored for a long time.

Swap the mace

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

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

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