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Sauce

Mushroom Catsup

A preserved mushroom sauce made by salting, mashing, spicing, and boiling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Mushroom Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mushrooms

  1. Clean the mushrooms without washing them.

  2. Place them in a deep stone or earthen pan, layering with salt.

  3. Let the salt penetrate the mushrooms for 2-3 hours until they break easily.

Macerate and season

  1. Mash the mixture with your hands and stir well.

  2. Repeat the mashing and stirring for two days.

  3. Add black pepper and mixed spice to the mixture.

Cook and seal

  1. Transfer everything to a stone jar, seal it tightly, and place it in a stew pan of boiling water.

  2. Keep the water boiling for at least two 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 + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Allspice + macetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

What each ingredient does

Fresh mushrooms
Provide the bulk of the ketchup and release their juices as they break down.
Salt
Draws moisture out of the mushrooms and helps them break down while preserving the mixture.
Black pepper
Adds sharp, pungent heat that balances the savory depth of the mushrooms.
Mixed spice
Adds warm aromatic flavour from clove, allspice, and mace.

The step that matters

Let the salt penetrate the mushrooms. Salt must draw out moisture and soften the mushrooms before mashing; stopping too early leaves them firm and hard to break down, so the mixture stays chunky and the juice is poorly extracted.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Macethe original

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