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Sauce

Mushroom Catsup

A mushroom-based sauce made with salt, pepper, and allspice, simmered and strained.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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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 Catsup

Oven, in the book's wordsA very cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

Salt and draw out liquid

  1. Break a peck of large mushrooms into a deep earthen pan.

  2. Strew ¾ pound of coarse sea salt among the mushrooms.

  3. Cover with a cloth or paper and place in a cool oven overnight.

  4. The next day, strain off the liquid and measure it.

Boil and season

  1. Boil the liquid for 15 minutes.

  2. For each quart of liquid, add 1 ounce of black pepper and ¼ ounce of allspice.

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

Mushrooms
Form the bulk of the catsup and release the liquid that becomes the sauce.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out of the mushrooms and helps preserve the liquid.
Black pepper
Adds sharp, aromatic heat to the finished catsup.
Allspice
Adds warm, spiced aroma to the finished catsup.

The step that matters

Salting the mushrooms overnight. Salt draws water out of the mushroom cells by osmosis, creating the liquid the catsup is made from. Too little salt or uneven mixing leaves mushrooms dry and poorly preserved.

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.

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