British cookbooks from around the 15th century and the Middle Ages contain many intriguing recipes, featuring foods like meat and bread disguised as household utensils like kettles, intended to shock diners. Even at a time when food preservation technology wasn’t fully developed, there were already “tomato sauces” that claimed to last 20 years?

An artificial kettle made from pork, cheese, and bread

Cook lean pork thoroughly and cut into small pieces. Grind saffron, ginger, cinnamon, salt, galangal (a type of ginger), old cheese, and crumbled bread in a mortar and pestle. Add the pork to the ground spices.

After ensuring the pork is ground, mix in a raw egg. Then, carefully grease the inside of a long kettle with grease and fill it with the prepared filling.

Use a clean piece of canvas to seal the mouth of the kettle as tightly as possible, then tie it around the rim. Then, cook it in a lead pot or cauldron along with the large piece of meat to ensure the filling is cooked through.

Next, take the kettle and break it, leaving the filling inside. Then, using a meat fork, pierce the filling and roast it over the fire. Then, carefully knead a batter with the spices, saffron, galangal, cinnamon, and flour in sufficient quantity. Grind it finely in a mortar and pestle, then mix it with a raw egg and add a generous amount of sugar from Alexandria. Let the filling dry while you spread the batter on it and serve.

To make a twenty-year-old tomato sauce

Take one gallon of strong, old beer, one pound of anchovies from which the brine has been washed off, one pound of peeled shallots, half an ounce of nutmeg, half an ounce of cloves, a quarter ounce of whole peppercorns, three or four dried ginger roots, and two quarts of finely chopped large shiitake mushroom caps.

Seal all the ingredients tightly and simmer until half-cooked. Then strain through a flannel bag. After straining, let it cool and then boil.

You can carry it to the Indies. A ratio of one tablespoon of this stuff to one pound of freshly melted butter makes an ideal fish sauce or gravy substitute. The stronger the beer and the longer it’s aged, the better the ketchup.

Making Mom “Ketchup”

For every quart of old mom (a beer brewed with wheat malt and flavored with herbs), add four ounces of anchovies, four ounces of nutmeg and sliced ​​nutmeg, one ounce of cloves, and half an ounce of black peppercorns. Boil until reduced to one-third, cool, and bottle.

Over two thousand years ago, the Romans enjoyed a ketchup-like sauce called liquamen, but it was probably closer to Thai fish sauce.

However, modern ketchup likely traces its origins to other parts of the Far East, and its introduction to Britain is undoubtedly linked to the expansion of trade, and when it comes to trade, the East India Company in the 17th century is a key player. Elizabeth. Raffald also included a recipe for a similar, but spicier, “ketchup” that lasted seven years, making it suitable for travel to the East Indies.

Both recipes demonstrate how British chefs adapted foreign cooking techniques using local ingredients, such as the ingenious use of beer. The resulting sauces, in turn, became popular throughout the expanding British Empire.

While various “ketchups” made with shiitake mushrooms are still available in supermarkets today, their popularity has long been ceded to the later and increasingly ubiquitous authentic tomato ketchup. Tomato-based ketchup didn’t become mainstream until the late 19th century.