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Double Mushboom Catsup

A thick mushroom ketchup made by steeping fresh mushrooms in salt and catsup, then simmering with spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,800 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Double Mushboom Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

Macerate

  1. Sprinkle 3 ounces of salt over 1 gallon of fresh mushrooms and pour in 1 quart of ready-made catsup.

  2. Stir occasionally for 4 days.

Strain and simmer

  1. Drain the liquid from the mushrooms.

  2. Boil the liquid for 15 minutes with 1 ounce of whole black pepper, 1½ teaspoons of mace, 1 ounce of ginger, and 3 to 4 grains of cayenne.

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 + gingertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,800 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Mace + gingertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,152 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  4. Mushroom + gingertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together867 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Pepper + macetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

Pepper and mace barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Mushrooms
Provide the bulk and the savory body, and release the liquid that becomes the ketchup.
Catsup
Adds tomato sweetness and acidity that rounds out the savory mushroom flavor.
Black pepper
Adds sharp, woody aroma and mild heat to the boiled liquid.
Ginger
Adds warm, fresh aroma that lifts the flavor of the simmered liquid.
Mace
Adds a warm, nutmeg-like aroma to the simmered liquid.

The step that matters

Stir occasionally for 4 days. Salt draws water out of the mushrooms through osmosis, and this slow maceration is what produces the liquid that is later boiled. Stirring keeps the salt and catsup evenly distributed so the mushrooms release liquid uniformly rather than in patches.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, pepper, 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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