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Sauce

Mushroom Catsup

A fermented mushroom sauce made by boiling mushrooms, salt, and spices, then aging and reboiling with horseradish.

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 Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the liquor

  1. Place the mushrooms and salt in a stew-pan over low heat.

  2. Allow them to produce liquor, then strain it.

Spice and boil

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

  2. Boil and skim the mixture well.

Bottle and mature

  1. Once cooled, cork it tightly.

  2. After two months, boil it again with fresh spices and horseradish.

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

Mushrooms
Release their liquid, which becomes the savoury base of the ketchup.
Salt
Draws moisture out of the mushrooms and helps preserve the liquor.
Shallots
Add savoury depth and aromatic sweetness to the liquor.
Garlic
Adds pungent aroma that mellows during the long maturing period.
Horseradish
Adds sharp pungency that is added at the second boil for a fresh bite.

The step that matters

Skimming the boiled mixture. Boiling the spiced liquor brings impurities and foam to the surface. Skimming them off keeps the finished ketchup clear and clean-tasting, and it matters before the liquid is cooled and corked for 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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