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Tomato Catsup

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and cook

  1. Chop the raw tomatoes and place them in a large pot.

  2. Add salt, black pepper, cloves, allspice, and white mustard seed.

  3. Cook the mixture well over medium heat.

  4. Just before removing from heat, stir in the vinegar.

Bottle

  1. Bottle the catsup and add a little vinegar to each bottle to prevent mold.

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

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Raw tomatoes
Form the bulk of the ketchup, providing the body and flavor base that cooking thickens.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and helps preserve the finished ketchup.
Salt
Seasons the sauce and draws out moisture, deepening the overall flavor.
White mustard seed
Contributes a sharp, pungent background note to the spiced sauce.

The step that matters

Stir in the vinegar just before removing from heat. Vinegar's sharp acidity fades with prolonged heating, so adding it at the end keeps the tang bright. Cooking the tomatoes well first thickens the sauce and concentrates its flavor.

Swap the tomato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, clove, allspice, 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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