Mushroom Catsup

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Preserving. Old preserving methods may not make food safe to keep. Use current tested guidance.

Ingredients 9 ingredients

Contains Tree nuts Read from the ingredients, not verified. Check labels.

Keep children and pets away from the hob and the oven, and keep oven gloves and a lid within reach.

Boiling water and steam. Turn pan handles inward, away from the edge of the hob. Lift lids away from you, and pour hot water away from your body: steam burns too.

The name of catsup is given to several kinds of liquid pickles, made of savoury vegetable substances, such as mushrooms, walnuts, &c.
The following method of preparing mushroom catsup is copied from the Cook’s Oracle:-- Take full grown mushrooms;
put a layer of them at the bottom of a deep earthen pan, and sprinkle them with salt, then another layer of mushrooms, put some more salt on them, and so on, alternately, salt and mushrooms;
let them remain two or three hours, by which time the salt will have penetrated the mushrooms, and rendered them easy to break;
mash them well and let them remain for a couple of days, stirring them up, and mashing them well each day;
then pour them into a stone jar, and to each quart add half an ounce of whole black pepper;
stop the jar very close, set it in a stew-pan of boiling water, and keep it simmering for two hours at least.
Take out the jar, and pour off the juice clear from the sediment through a hair sieve into a stewpan (without squeezing the mushrooms);
let it boil up, skim it, and pour it into a dry jar;
let it stand till next day, then pour it off as gently as possible, through a tammis, or flannel bag, (so as not to disturb the sediment at the bottom of the jar.) Bottle it in pints or half pints;
for it is best to keep it in such quantities as are soon used: in each pint, put a dozen berries of black pepper, the same of allspice, and a table-spoonful of brandy.