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Sauce

Tomato Catsup

A preserved tomato sauce made with tomatoes, onions, sugar, salt, spices, peach leaves, and cider vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Tomato Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine tomatoes, onions, sugar, salt, mustard, cloves, black pepper, cayenne pepper, and peach leaves in a large pot.

  2. Boil the mixture for 2 hours, or longer if the tomatoes are very watery.

  3. Just before removing from heat, stir in the cider vinegar. If the mixture boils after adding the vinegar, it will turn dark.

  4. Pour the mixture through a colander, then bottle and seal.

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Clove + peachtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together280 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  5. Mustard + clovetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,829 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

Tomatoes
Provide the main body, moisture and flavour that the mixture reduces into a thick sauce.
Onions
Add savoury sweetness and aromatic depth as they soften during the long boil.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the acidity of the tomatoes and vinegar.
Cider vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and helps preserve the finished ketchup.

The step that matters

Adding the vinegar just before removing from heat. Vinegar added to a mixture that keeps boiling can darken the color and dull the fresh flavour. Stirring it in just before the pot comes off the heat avoids this.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, sugar, mustard, clove, pepper, peach, cider):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Lettucefits better
  3. Horseradishfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, sugar, mustard, clove, pepper, peach, cider. 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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