Mushroom ketchup was the everyday store sauce of the Georgian and Victorian kitchen. Mushrooms were salted until they wept, and the dark liquor was boiled down with pepper and mace and bottled. It is thin, salty and deeply savoury, a cousin of Worcestershire sauce, and a few drops lift a gravy, a stew or a Welsh rarebit. One English company, Geo Watkins, still makes it.
This is Eliza Acton’s recipe, with her own words in the Notes. She wanted “rather the pure essence of mushrooms” than the anchovy-and-spice mixtures “commonly composed, especially for sale”.
⚠ Keep it refrigerated. Acton bottled it and sealed the corks with resin. A modern kitchen should treat it as a refrigerated sauce, since no tested process exists.
Untested: I have not made this yet.
Ingredients
- 2 gallons large, ripe, open mushrooms (“flaps”)
- 3/4 lb salt
- For every quart of liquor
- 1/2 oz black peppercorns (or 1/4 teaspoon good cayenne)
- 1 drachm (about 1/8 oz) mace
Directions
- Key ingredients Salt Black Pepper
- Salt the mushrooms. Break the mushrooms into small pieces in a deep earthenware or glass crock, scattering the salt among them and keeping most of it for the top.
- Let them weep. Leave 2 days (Acton’s summary says 3 or 4), stirring gently and often with a wooden spoon.
- Simmer. Turn everything into a heavy pan, heat slowly, and simmer 15 to 20 minutes.
- Strain. Strain the liquor from the mushrooms without pressing, then strain again.
- Reduce. Measure the liquor and boil it hard until reduced by nearly half. Add the pepper and mace in the proportion above.
- Settle. Pour into a clean jug, cover with a folded cloth, and leave in a cool place overnight.
- Bottle. Pour it off its sediment into small clean bottles and seal. Store in the refrigerator.
Notes
Eliza Acton’s words From Modern Cookery for Private Families, Chapter VII, “Store Sauces”, as printed in the 1882 “New Edition” (Project Gutenberg #72482). The first edition was 1845, and the text here has not been checked against it:
“Break up small into a deep earthen pan, two gallons of large ripe mushroom-flaps, and strew amongst them three quarters of a pound of salt, reserving the larger portion of it for the top. Let them remain two days, and stir them gently with a wooden spoon often during the time; then turn them into a large stewpan or enamelled saucepan, heat them slowly, and simmer them for fifteen or twenty minutes. Strain the liquor closely from them without pressure; strain and measure it; put it into a very clean stewpan, and boil it quickly until it is reduced nearly half. For every quart allow half an ounce of black peppercorns and a drachm of mace; or, instead of the pepper, a quarter of a teaspoonful (ten grains) of good cayenne; pour the catsup into a clean jug or jar, lay a folded cloth over it, and keep it in a cool place until the following day; pour it gently from the sediment, put into small bottles, cork them well, and rosin them down.”
Her own summary reads: “Mushrooms, 2 gallons; salt, 3/4 lb.; to macerate three or four days” — which contradicts the “two days” in her text. Both are given above.
The first English ketchup had no mushrooms Eliza Smith’s 1727 “English Katchup” was anchovies, shallots and white-wine vinegar. Mushrooms arrive in Richard Bradley (1732), and Hannah Glasse gives a mushroom ketchup with stale beer and anchovies “to keep twenty Years” for ships’ captains. See the Mushrooms dive’s around-the-world page, and the collection’s Worcestershire Sauce.
About the photo The photo shows a homemade mushroom ketchup, which was cooked down thicker than Acton’s thin, pourable sauce.