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Tomato Ketchup

A preserved tomato condiment made by boiling tomatoes with spices, salt, vinegar, and mustard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice 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 Ketchup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Boil the tomatoes until soft.

  2. Squeeze the tomatoes through a fine wire sieve.

  3. Add salt, cloves, allspice, cayenne pepper, black pepper, garlic, celery seed, mustard, and vinegar.

  4. Boil the mixture until it reduces by half.

Bottle

  1. Bottle the ketchup when it is cold.

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. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Celery + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Tomato + garlictop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,076 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  5. Tomato + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes
Form the body and main flavour of the ketchup once cooked and strained.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and helps preserve the ketchup.
Garlic
Contributes pungent aroma and savoury depth to the sauce.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the sauce and draws out flavour from the tomatoes.

The step that matters

Boil the mixture until it reduces by half. Boiling evaporates water and concentrates the sauce, so it thickens and its flavours intensify. Stopping too early leaves the ketchup thin and watery, while over-reducing can make it overly thick and harsh.

Swap the tomato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against clove, allspice, pepper, garlic, celery, mustard, vinegar. 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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