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Tomato Catsup

A tomato-based sauce made by boiling tomatoes, reducing them, and seasoning with mace, ginger, cloves, cayenne pepper, salt, and garlic.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,038 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Tomato Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Slice the tomatoes without peeling them.

  2. Boil the tomatoes until soft and strain them through a sieve.

Reduce and season

  1. Boil the strained tomatoes until reduced to one third of their original volume.

  2. Add all the other ingredients and boil for an additional 30 minutes.

Bottle

  1. Bottle, cork, and seal the catsup.

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  3. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Ginger + garlictop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,402 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

What each ingredient does

Ripe tomatoes
Provide the main body, pulp and flavour base that the reduction concentrates into ketchup.
Garlic
Adds pungent aroma that mellows during the long boil.
Sea salt
Seasons the sauce and helps preserve it.

The step that matters

Reducing the strained tomatoes to one third. Boiling off most of the water concentrates the sugars and acids and thickens the pulp. If reduced too little, the ketchup stays thin and watery; if boiled too long, it can scorch on the bottom of the pan and turn bitter.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, ginger, clove, pepper, garlic):

  1. Cuminfits better
  2. Corianderfits better
  3. Oreganofits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, ginger, clove, pepper, garlic. 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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