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Sauce

Mushboom Catsup

A preserved mushroom sauce made by boiling mushroom liquid with spices and bottling it.

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 ↓

Mushboom Catsup

Oven, in the book's wordsA very cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

Draw the liquid

  1. Break the mushrooms into a deep earthen pan.

  2. Strew the salt among the mushrooms and cover with cloth or paper.

  3. Place in a cool oven overnight.

  4. Strain off the liquid.

  5. Measure the liquid.

Season and boil

  1. Boil the liquid for 15 minutes.

  2. For each quart of liquid, add black pepper, allspice, ginger, and mace.

  3. Boil for an additional 20 minutes.

Bottle and seal

  1. Bottle the mixture.

  2. Cork the bottle well.

  3. Dip the necks in melted rosin.

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
Provide the main body and liquid of the catsup.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out of the mushrooms and helps preserve the liquid.
Black pepper
Adds pungent heat and flavour to the seasoned liquid.
Allspice
Contributes warm, aromatic spice notes to the liquid.
Ginger
Adds aromatic warmth and a slightly sharp flavour.
Mace
Adds a delicate, aromatic spice flavour to the liquid.

The step that matters

Salting and overnight draw in a cool oven. Salt pulls liquid out of the mushrooms through osmosis, so the mushrooms must be fully covered and kept cool. Warm conditions would encourage spoilage before the liquid is boiled and preserved.

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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