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Mushroom Ketchup, Another Way

A preserved mushroom condiment made by cooking mushrooms with salt, shallots, garlic, spices, and horseradish, then bottling and aging.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 the mushrooms

  1. Clean the mushrooms and remove any damaged parts.

  2. Place mushrooms in a stew-pan with salt and set over low heat.

  3. Allow to cook until they release their liquid, then strain the liquid.

Make the ketchup

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

  2. Boil and skim the mixture well.

Bottle and keep

  1. Once cooled, bottle and cork tightly.

  2. After two months, reboil with fresh spices and horseradish to preserve.

  3. Store in a cool, dark place.

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 flavour and the liquid that forms the base of the ketchup.
Coarse sea salt
Draws liquid out of the mushrooms and helps preserve the ketchup.
Shallots
Add savoury depth and aromatic sweetness to the liquid.
Garlic
Adds pungent aroma and savoury depth to the ketchup.
Horseradish
Adds sharp pungency and aroma when reboiled before storing.

The step that matters

Skimming the boiled mixture. Boiling the liquid releases foam and impurities that rise to the surface. Skimming them off keeps the ketchup clear and reduces spoilage risk during long storage.

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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