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Mushroom Catchup

A preserved mushroom condiment made by stewing mushrooms, extracting juice, and seasoning with cinnamon, cloves, peppercorns, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove 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 Catchup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mushrooms

  1. Wash and crush the mushrooms.

  2. Add a handful of coarse sea salt for every peck of mushrooms and let them stand for one day.

  3. Place the mushrooms in an oven and let them stew for 12 hours.

  4. Extract the juice from the mushrooms.

Make and bottle the ketchup

  1. For every gallon of juice, add 1 ounce of cinnamon, 1 dozen cloves, 1 dozen black peppercorns, and 4 pounds of salt.

  2. Boil the mixture over a slow fire until it reduces by half.

  3. Bottle the catchup for use.

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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

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

  3. Mushroom + cinnamontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together150 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

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

What each ingredient does

Peck of mushrooms
Provides the main body and savoury umami flavour of the ketchup.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out of the mushrooms and helps preserve the juice.
Cinnamon
Adds warm, aromatic spice notes to the finished ketchup.
Cloves
Contributes strong aromatic spice that balances the rich mushroom flavour.

The step that matters

Boil the mixture until it reduces by half. Boiling concentrates the flavours and thickens the liquid, and a slow fire lets it reduce evenly without scorching. Reducing too little leaves the ketchup thin and less stable in storage.

Swap the cinnamon

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Cinnamonthe original
  4. Marjoramfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, clove. 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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