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Sauce

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

Prepare the mushrooms

  1. Cut the ends of the stalks from the mushrooms.

  2. Break the mushrooms into a deep earthen pan.

  3. Strew 1½ pounds of salt among the mushrooms. Reserve some salt for the top.

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

  5. Drain off the liquid without pressing the mushrooms.

  6. Strain and measure the liquid.

Make the ketchup

  1. Put the liquid into a clean saucepan.

  2. Boil quickly until reduced by half.

  3. Add ½ ounce of black pepper or ¼ teaspoon of cayenne and 1 drachm of mace per quart of liquid.

Settle and bottle

  1. Pour the catsup into a clean jar.

  2. Cover with a cloth.

  3. Keep in a cool place overnight.

  4. Gently pour off the sediment.

  5. Transfer the catsup into small bottles.

  6. Cork the bottles well.

  7. Optionally add a teaspoon of salad oil to exclude air.

  8. Store the bottles in a dry, cool place.

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
Release their liquid under salt, which becomes the base of the ketchup.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the mushrooms and preserves the liquid against spoilage.
Black pepper
Adds sharp, spicy aroma and flavour to the finished ketchup.
Mace
Adds warm, aromatic spice flavour to the reduced liquid.

The step that matters

Boil quickly until reduced by half. Reducing the liquid concentrates its flavour and thickens it, and boiling drives off water so the ketchup keeps better. Stopping early leaves it thin and more prone to spoiling.

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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