Mushroom Ketchup

The elixir of youth? Local delicacy Mushroom Ketchup makes Deeping man’s fortune. MUSHROOM KETCHUP

The rags to riches story of Joseph Cunnington, one of seven children of John and Mary Cunnington, born in 1828 in West Deeping, is inextricably tied up with the local delicacy of mushroom ketchup.

When Joseph’s father, an agricultural labourer, died in 1842, the family was left destitute. Joseph and his younger brother became pig labourers to provide for their mother, as recorded in the 1851 Census. Not long afterwards Joseph made a good marriage to Ann Mansfield of Bourne and the couple moved to Deeping St James where he became a market gardener in Eastgate (now number 91). The couple had three children.

Joseph began to make mushroom ketchup in a distillery on his premises. Soon the locals developed a taste for the delicacy and took their bottles to be filled, while Joseph began an enterprise of bottling the ketchup and shipping it by rail or horse and cart to nearby villages. He paid local children a few pennies to gather the crop of mushrooms on his land.

Joseph’s wife Ann died in 1861, and sadly his second wife, Martha Varney, died in childbirth in 1863 and was buried with her son Henry in Deeping St James cemetery. His third wife, Elizabeth Crane, who he married in 1864, bore him three more children. The popularity of his mushroom ketchup among the people of Deeping increased and soon Joseph found himself a farmer of 100 acres, employing five men and two boys.

Joseph’s mushroom ketchup became the Worcester Sauce of its day. People loved its tasty flavour of mushrooms and it went down a treat with a fried breakfast – men coming back from a hard day’s work on the fields would have lashings of it on their dinner.

By 1881 Joseph’s farm had extended to 600 acres, mostly in Stowgate, and he now employed 17 men and six boys. After the death of his wife in 1885, Joseph remained on his own for ten years but then in 1895, aged 67, he married Hannah Cox in Peterborough; his son Frederick was born when Joseph had reached the grand old age of 69!

When Joseph himself died in 1903 the mushroom ketchup business came to an end. His obituary reported that he had been in failing health for some time and that in the past his distillery business had been run on a large scale.

1860 Recipe

Take a bushel of large flaps of mushrooms gathered dry and bruise them with your hands. Put some at the bottom of an earthen pan, strew some salt over them, then another layer of mushrooms and salt til you have done. Put in half an ounce of beaten cloves and mace, the same of all spice and let them stand five or six days. Stir them up every day and tie a paper over them and bake for 4 hours in a slow oven. When done strain through a cloth to get all the liquor out and let the liquor stand to settle. Pour it clear from the settings; to every gallon of liquid add a quart of red wine and if not salt enough a little salt and a race of ginger cut small, half an ounce of cloves and mace. Boil it til about a third is reduced, then strain it through a sieve into a pan. The next day pour it from the settings and bottle it for use.

But mind to cork it tight.

Research; Joy Baxter, Mary Pendred & Dorothea Price Photographs; Ian Baxter

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