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Mushroom Catsup (Take the largest mushrooms cut)
Take the largest mushrooms, cut off the roots, put them in a stone jar, with salt; mash them and cover the jar. Let them stand two days, stirring them several times a day; then strain and boil the liquor, to every quart of which put one teaspoonful whole pepper, cloves, mustard-seed, a little ginger; when cold bottle it, leaving room in each bottle for one teacupful strong vinegar, and one tablespoonful brandy.
Cork and seal.--Mrs. C.
Mushroom Sauce.
After peeling, lay them on the oyster broiler and sprinkle with a little salt. Have ready a hot dish with butter, pepper, salt, and cream, and throw the mushrooms into this as they are taken from the broiler. A very nice sauce for steaks.--Mrs. J. S.
Two recipes sit side by side here. The broiled mushroom sauce is straightforward and still worth cooking; the catsup is an uncontrolled room-temperature ferment bottled and sealed with no measured acid, and it should not be attempted from these directions.
- Why the catsup failsMushrooms are a low-acid food, and the recipe salts them by eye, holds them two days at room temperature, boils the strained liquor for an unspecified time, then corks and seals it for storage. Nothing in the process establishes a known pH or a known process temperature, which is exactly the combination that allows Clostridium botulinum to grow in a sealed, oxygen-poor bottle. Use a current, tested recipe if you want mushroom ketchup.
- The vinegar is not a safeguardA teacupful of vinegar (variously reckoned at about 4-6 oz) added to an unspecified bottle size, after the liquor has cooled, gives no reliable final acidity. Nineteenth-century vinegar also varied widely in strength, and "strong vinegar" is not a measurement.
- "The largest mushrooms"These were most likely field mushrooms gathered outdoors, and the book assumes the reader can identify them. Wild collection for a bulk salted ferment is a separate hazard from the preserving problem and requires expert identification.
- Stone jarA glazed stoneware crock, the standard vessel for salting and brining. Unglazed or antique glazed crockery can leach lead and is not suitable for food use regardless of what is being made in it.
- The mushroom sauce: oyster broilerA hinged wire gridiron held over coals. A ridged grill pan, a heavy skillet over high heat, or an oven broiler set to high all reproduce it; the point is dry, fast heat so the mushrooms color rather than stew in their own liquid.
- Salt timing on the broiled mushroomsSalt draws moisture out, so salt them as they go onto the heat rather than in advance, or they will weep and steam. Peeling is optional with modern cultivated mushrooms; trimming and wiping is enough.
- Assembling the sauceHave the hot dish of butter, cream, pepper and salt ready before the mushrooms come off the heat, as the recipe says. A couple of tablespoons of cream and a similar amount of butter is enough for a pound of mushrooms; it should coat, not pool.
- Yield for the sauceThe recipe gives no quantities; as a rough guide, a pound of mushrooms treated this way will dress steaks for about four.
"Catsup" in this book still carries its older, broader meaning: a thin, strongly seasoned, keeping liquid used to season other cooking, descended from the fermented fish and soy sauces of Southeast Asia whose name English speakers borrowed in the seventeenth century. Mushroom, walnut and oyster catsups were the standard English versions, and they long outranked tomato catsup, which only became the default sense of the word in America late in the nineteenth century. Mushroom catsup earned its place because it delivered concentrated savory depth — what we would now call glutamate — into gravies and made-over meat dishes at a time when there was no bouillon cube or bottled sauce to reach for. Housekeeping in Old Virginia (1879), compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree from contributions by Virginia housekeepers, credits each receipt to its donor, and the initials here — Mrs. C., Mrs. J. S. — are the book's usual signature, a reminder that these were working household methods rather than tested formulas.