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Sauces and condiments from England

Mushroom ketchup (18th-century English)ketchup

A historical recipe, not a modern product. Large mushroom flaps were salted overnight so they gave up a dark liquor, which was strained, boiled with spices and bottled. Recipes by Hannah Glasse (1747) and Elizabeth Raffald (1769) show it; it is a salt extraction with no documented microbial fermentation.

Fully documentedSauces and condiments16 min – 12 h

Recipe

Mushroom ketchup (18th-century English), a photo from Wikimedia Commons
Photo: Rex Roof from Ann Arbor, MI, USA, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Amounts from a sourceAmounts from Hannah Glasse's 1747 recipe "To make Ketchup", per quart of mushroom liquor. Raffald's 1769 recipe uses 1 oz each of cloves, allspice, black pepper and ginger and half a pound of salt per gallon.
Large mushroom flapsOnly straws and dirt picked off[glasse1747]
SaltA good deal (Glasse); a handful per peck of mushrooms (Raffald)[glasse1747][raffald1769]
Whole ginger1/4 oz per quart of liquor[glasse1747]
Whole pepper1/8 oz (half a quarter of an ounce) per quart of liquor[glasse1747]
Mace and cloves4 or 5 blades of mace and 6 cloves per pint bottle[glasse1747]

Total time across the recorded steps: 16 min – 12 h

Start
Drag the bar or press Play
Close-up: salt moving into a piece

What changes: Salt draws dark juice out of the mushrooms overnight

Step 1 of 5
Salt the mushrooms overnight
Time
Left until the next morning (Glasse); all night (Raffald)
Reported
Temperature
Not documented
Salt
None given
Acidity
Not documented

Output: salted mushrooms sitting in their own dark juice.

Flavour
Not documented
Texture
Not documented
Colour
Not documented

Microbes at work in this step

salt draws juice out of the mushroom flesh

Method

Measured measured in a studySet fixed by a specification or tested recipeReported one source reports itTypical a general value, not sourced for this fermentUnconfirmed not yet checked against a source

At a glance

A historical recipe, not a modern product. Large mushroom flaps were salted overnight so they gave up a dark liquor, which was strained, boiled with spices and bottled. Recipes by Hannah Glasse (1747) and Elizabeth Raffald (1769) show it; it is a salt extraction with no documented microbial fermentation. Made in 5 steps over 16 min – 12 h. The longest step, break, heat and wring out the juice, takes 1 min – 12 h (Glasse H. 1747).

Key numbers
Main step1 min – 12 hReported[glasse1747][raffald1769]Break, heat and wring out the juice

What makes this one different

Unlike tomato ketchup, this is a thin, dark extract of salted mushrooms with no sugar or vinegar. Unlike fish sauce, the salting lasts only one night, so the flavour comes from salt and heat rather than a long fermentation.

Related ferments

Variants

  • Ketchup with stale beerGlasse's second recipe simmers the liquor with stale beer (or red wine), horseradish, bay, onion and spices until a third is gone.
  • Mum ketchupGlasse says a pint of mum (a strong beer) to a pint of ketchup makes it taste like "foreign" ketchup; Raffald gives a separate mum catchup recipe.
  • Walnut ketchupRaffald also makes a catchup from green walnuts.
  • Double catsup and quintessence of mushrooms (Kitchiner, 1821)Kitchiner boils his mushroom juice down to half to make "double" catsup, which he says keeps better and is added to sauces by the spoonful. His "quintessence" is salted for three hours, mashed, strained the next day and boiled to half with no spice; he says it does not keep long.

Safety

A historical recipe, kept as a record and not a method to copy at home. In his 1821 recipe Kitchiner says a badly corked bottle kept in a damp place will soon spoil. He tells the cook to hold the bottle up to a strong light and, if a skin (pellicle) forms on the liquor, to boil it up again with a few peppercorns. He adds that the spice is there to keep the catsup from fermenting. Do not follow that advice: the National Center for Home Food Preservation says not to taste food that shows signs of spoilage, and that spoiled low-acid foods may show very little sign of it, so suspect containers should be treated as having produced botulinum toxin. It also gives mushrooms only pressure-canner processes and says not to can wild mushrooms. Kitchiner says only that the mushrooms must be the right sort and fresh gathered.

History and sources

Every number is labelled with how it is known. How this atlas is made

Glasse's The Art of Cookery (1747) and Raffald's The Experienced English Housekeeper (1769) both print mushroom ketchup, and both books call for a spoonful of catchup in many sauces. By the third edition of Kitchiner's The Cook's Oracle (1821) he describes mushroom catsup as a relish for made dishes, ragouts, soups and sauces and urges cooks to make it at home.

Starter
The sources we found do not say how its fermentation begins.
Microbes
No study we found names its microbes.
Temperature, salt and pH
The sources we found give no temperature, salt or pH figure for any of its steps.
  1. [glasse1747] Glasse H. 1747, The Art of Cookery, Made Plain and Easy, "To make Ketchup" and "Another Way to make Ketchup" (Internet Archive scan)archive
  2. [raffald1769] Raffald E. 1769, The Experienced English Housekeeper, Manchester, "To make Mushroom Catchup" (Internet Archive scan)archive
  3. [kitchiner1821] Kitchiner W. 1821, The Cook's Oracle, third edition, London, "Mushroom Catsup" (No. 439) and "Quintessence of Mushrooms" (No. 440) (Internet Archive scan; a later, 19th-century recipe)archive
  4. [nchfp-mushrooms] National Center for Home Food Preservation, Mushrooms – Whole or Slicedgov
  5. [nchfp-spoiled] National Center for Home Food Preservation, Identifying and Handling Spoiled Canned Foodgov