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Mushroom Catsup

A preserved mushroom sauce made by salting, fermenting, and reducing the liquid with spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Mushroom and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13,580 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Mushroom Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

Salt the mushrooms

  1. Cut the ends of the stalks from the mushrooms and break them into a deep earthen pan.

  2. Strew 3/4 pound of salt among the mushrooms, reserving some for the top.

  3. Let the mushrooms stand for 3 to 4 days, stirring gently once every 24 hours.

  4. Drain the liquid without pressing the mushrooms, then strain and measure it.

Reduce and season

  1. Put the liquid into a clean saucepan and boil quickly until reduced by half.

  2. For each quart of liquid, add 1/2 ounce of black pepper or 1/4 teaspoon of cayenne, and 1 drachm of mace.

  3. Pour the catsup into a clean jar, cover with a cloth, and keep in a cool place overnight.

  4. Gently pour off the sediment and transfer the catsup into small bottles.

Bottle

  1. Cork the bottles well and seal with rosin.

  2. Optionally, add 1 teaspoon of salad oil to each bottle before corking.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Mushroom + macetop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,529 recipes

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

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

Fresh mushrooms
Provide the main body and liquid that becomes the ketchup once salted and drained.
Coarse sea salt
Draws liquid out of the mushrooms and preserves the extract against spoilage.
Black pepper
Adds sharp, pungent heat and aroma to the reduced liquid.
Mace
Adds warm, aromatic spice flavour to the ketchup.

The step that matters

Draining without pressing the mushrooms. Pressing the salted mushrooms forces out solids and cloudy particles along with the liquid, which leaves more sediment in the finished ketchup. Letting the liquid drain naturally keeps the extract clearer.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Macethe 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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