Skip to main content
Main

Mushroom Catsup

A fermented mushroom condiment made by salting, fermenting, and boiling mushrooms with spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Mushroom Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

Salt the mushrooms

  1. Cut off the stems of the fresh mushrooms and place them in a jar.

  2. Sprinkle a little coarse sea salt between the layers of mushrooms and press them down.

  3. Let the mushrooms sit for three days.

  4. Strain the liquid from the mushrooms.

Spice and boil

  1. For every quart of liquid, add 1 teaspoon each of ground cloves, ground cinnamon, and ground pepper.

  2. Boil the mixture for two to three hours.

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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Cinnamon + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,890 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  4. Mushroom + clovetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,663 recipes

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

  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

Fresh mushrooms
Release their liquid during salting, becoming the base of the ketchup.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out of the mushrooms and helps preserve them during the three-day rest.
Ground cloves
Add a warm, pungent aroma that gives the ketchup its spiced flavour.
Ground cinnamon
Adds a sweet, woody aroma that rounds out the spice blend.
Ground pepper
Adds mild heat and sharpness to the spiced liquid.

The step that matters

Boil the mixture for two to three hours. Long simmering concentrates the liquid and mellows the spices, so the ketchup thickens and its flavour deepens. Stopping early leaves it thin and sharp.

Swap the cinnamon

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Cinnamonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, clove, 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.

More mushroom ketchup recipes

Sauce 4 See all 229 →

You might also like

Mushroom SoupMushroom Soup60 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes