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Tomato Catsup

A preserved tomato sauce made by boiling tomatoes, reducing with vinegar, sugar, salt, spices, and optional aromatics.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Tomato Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Boil the tomatoes gently for 30 minutes.

  2. Press through a colander to remove skins and cores.

  3. Return the liquid to a porcelain-lined kettle and boil down by half.

Season and reduce

  1. Add vinegar, sugar, salt, and spices, then boil down by two-thirds.

  2. For a lighter color, boil down to two-thirds after adding vinegar, then sugar, salt, and spices.

  3. Let it come to a boil, then remove from heat.

  4. Optionally, add two small heads of garlic or a finely chopped small onion with the spices.

Bottle and seal

  1. Bottle when completely cold, pouring a little alcohol into the top of each bottle.

  2. Cork and seal the bottles.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Ginger + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Allspice + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,620 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Allspice + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,928 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes
Form the main body of the sauce and provide its flavor and natural pectin.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens flavor and helps keep the ketchup stable.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the vinegar and acidity of the tomatoes.
Salt
Seasons the sauce and helps draw out flavor during reduction.
Black pepper
Adds sharp, aromatic heat that rounds out the spiced flavor.

The step that matters

Boil down to the stated reduction. Ketchup thickens only as water evaporates, so cooking too briefly leaves it thin and runny. Boiling too long makes it dense and can scorch on the kettle base, so the reduction amount matters.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vinegar, sugar, pepper, allspice, mustard, ginger, clove):

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, sugar, pepper, allspice, mustard, ginger, clove. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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