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Sauce

Mushroom Catsup

A sauce made by boiling mushrooms with salt, pepper, allspice, ginger, and mace, then bottling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and ginger 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 Catsup

Oven, in the book's wordsA very cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

Draw the 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. Set the pan in a cool oven overnight, covered with a cloth or paper.

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

Spice and boil

  1. Boil the liquid for 15 minutes.

  2. For each quart of liquid, add 1 ounce of black pepper, ¼ ounce of allspice, ½ ounce of ginger, and 2 large blades of mace.

  3. Boil the mixture rapidly for an additional 20 minutes.

Bottle

  1. Once thoroughly cold, pour it into bottles and cork them well.

  2. Seal the necks with melted bottle cement to secure the catsup.

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. Allspice + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,620 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Pepper + allspicetop 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. Pepper + gingertop 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 their liquid under salt, which becomes the base of the ketchup.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out of the mushrooms and helps preserve the liquid.
Black pepper
Adds sharp, pungent heat that rounds out the savory flavor.
Allspice
Contributes warm, aromatic spice notes to the liquid.
Ginger
Adds a bright, aromatic warmth to the spiced liquid.
Mace
Adds a delicate, nutmeg-like aroma to the spiced liquid.

The step that matters

Boiling the spiced liquid rapidly for 20 minutes. Boiling concentrates the liquid and extracts flavor from the spices, while the thorough cooling before bottling prevents condensation and spoilage from trapped moisture and heat.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, pepper, allspice, 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.

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