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Sauce

Mushroom Ketchup

A preserved mushroom sauce made by fermenting and reducing mushrooms with salt, pepper, mace, and optional spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 Ketchup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mushrooms

  1. Select good‑sized mushrooms, ensuring they are not worm‑eaten.

  2. Cut off the ends of the stalks and wipe the mushrooms carefully.

  3. Break the mushrooms into a pan and sprinkle the salt over them, placing the largest portion on top.

  4. Stir daily for three days, then strain the liquid without pressure.

Make the ketchup

  1. Measure the liquid and add ½ ounce of whole black pepper and 1 drachm of mace.

  2. Boil the mixture in a clean pan until reduced to a little more than half.

  3. Pour into a clean jug, cover with a folded cloth, and let sit overnight.

Bottle

  1. Pour into small bottles, cork, and seal.

  2. Optionally, add a little salad oil to the necks of the bottles to exclude air.

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. Mace + allspicetop 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
Provide the main bulk and savoury flavour that the salt draws liquid out of.
Salt
Draws liquid out of the mushrooms and preserves the resulting liquor.
Black pepper
Adds sharp, pungent spice that deepens the ketchup's savoury flavour.
Mace
Adds warm, aromatic spice notes to the ketchup.

The step that matters

Boiling down the liquid. Boiling reduces the liquid by evaporation, concentrating flavour and thickening it. Stopping short leaves it too thin to keep well, while over-reducing makes it overly salty and dense.

Swap the allspice

The recipe marks allspice as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mushroom, pepper, mace, ginger):

  1. Clovefits better
  2. Allspicethe original
  3. Nutmegfits about as well
  4. Thymefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, pepper, mace, 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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