Important: Safety Warning
This page offers rules for telling edible mushrooms from poisonous ones. No such rules are reliable, and these identifications predate modern mycology. Deadly species closely resemble edible ones, and mistakes are regularly fatal. Never eat a wild mushroom on the strength of this text.
In addition, this page describes home-canning methods from before the causes of botulism were understood. Canning low-acid foods without a pressure canner, as described here, can allow the growth of Clostridium botulinum, whose toxin is among the deadliest known. Follow current USDA home-canning guidelines instead.
This information has been left in for historical purposes but should not be acted upon.
Home › Cookery › Mushroom Catsup (Break one peck large mushrooms)
Mushroom Catsup (Break one peck large mushrooms)
Break one peck large mushrooms into a deep earthen pan. Strew three-quarters pound salt among them, and set them one night in a cool oven, with a fold of cloth or paper over them. Next day strain off the liquor, and to each quart add one ounce black pepper, one-quarter ounce allspice, one-half ounce ginger, two large blades mace.
Boil quickly twenty minutes. When perfectly cold, put into bottles, and cork well, and keep in a cool place.--Mrs. J. B. N.
Mushroom Catsup.
Pack the mushrooms in layers, with salt, in a jar; let them stand three hours, then pound them in a mortar, return them to the jar and let them remain three or four days, stirring them occasionally.
For every quart of the liquor add, one ounce of pepper, half ounce allspice; set the jar in the kettle of water, and boil four hours, then pour the liquor through a fine sieve, and boil until it is reduced one-half. Let it cool and bottle.--Mrs. C. C.
Two versions of the same preparation, both of which produce a low-acid mushroom liquor sealed into bottles with no measured heat process. That is the problem, and it is worth understanding in detail before deciding what to do with the page.
- Botulism is the specific riskMushroom liquor is low in acid and low in sugar, and the finished catsup is corked and held in a cool place with no processing that reaches or holds a killing temperature for Clostridium botulinum spores. Canned mushrooms are one of the classic vehicles for botulism precisely because the spores survive boiling and the sealed bottle gives them the oxygen-free conditions they need.
- The salt is not a reliable controlThree-quarters of a pound of salt to a peck of mushrooms draws the liquor out, but the strained and boiled result is diluted and there is no way to know the final salt concentration in the bottle. Mrs. C. C.'s version calls for salt in layers but gives no quantity at all. Preservation by salt requires a measured brine strength, not layers by eye.
- The three-to-four-day standIn the second version the pounded mushrooms sit for three or four days, at whatever temperature the kitchen or larder happened to be, stirred occasionally, before any heat is applied. That is an uncontrolled ferment on a high-moisture, protein-bearing substrate, and nothing later in the method is designed to correct what may grow in it.
- "A cool oven" overnightIn a nineteenth-century range this meant the residual warmth of a dying fire rather than an active cooking heat; period sources differ widely on what temperature that actually was. It is a drawing heat, and depending on how far the fire had died it may hold the mushrooms for hours at temperatures warm enough for bacteria to multiply.
- The mushrooms themselvesA peck is eight dry quarts, roughly five to six pounds of field mushrooms. If the mushrooms are gathered rather than bought, note that wild Agaricus species have look-alikes, including toxic ones.
- Blades of maceWhole pieces of the lacy aril that surrounds a nutmeg, sold today mostly ground. Conversions vary, but two large blades is on the order of half a teaspoon of ground mace; the whole spice was used here so it could be strained out.
- If you want mushroom ketchupUse a current recipe with tested acidification and either refrigeration or a verified processing schedule. Commercial mushroom ketchup is also still made and sold.
Mushroom catsup is the older sense of the word: before tomatoes took the name, a catsup or ketchup was a thin, dark, salty condiment liquor, and English cooks made versions from mushrooms, walnuts, oysters and anchovies. The word itself is generally traced to a Southeast Asian fermented fish sauce, carried into English through the ports, and the mushroom version was the domestic answer to it — a way of holding the savory depth of a heavy autumn crop in a bottle for the rest of the year. Its presence here, in a book assembled in 1879 from the manuscript receipts of Virginia housekeepers and printed with each contributor's initials, marks it as everyday pantry work rather than company cooking: a spoonful went into gravies, hashes and made dishes to give them a background of meatiness. That two women in the same collection submit two different methods for it says how routine it was, and how little standardization there was in a kitchen literature passed hand to hand.