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Sauce

Currant Catsup

A thick sauce made from stewed currants, sugar, spices, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,890 recipes. Both carry methyl cinnamate, which smells strawberry. The science ↓

Currant Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Stew the currants and sugar in a pot until the mixture is quite thick.

  2. Add the cinnamon, salt, pepper, and vinegar to the thickened mixture.

  3. Bottle the catsup for use.

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. Cinnamon + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,890 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  2. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Currant + vinegartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together693 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  4. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

  5. Currant + cinnamontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Currants
Provide the fruit base and natural pectin that thickens the mixture as it stews.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and, with reduction, helps thicken and preserve the cooked fruit.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and helps keep the finished ketchup stable.

The step that matters

Stewing until quite thick. The currants and sugar must cook down far enough for the pectin and sugar to set the mixture. If it is bottled too thin, it can spoil or stay runny. Cooking it fully before adding the vinegar and spices gives a stable, spreadable result.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, cinnamon, pepper, vinegar):

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Plumfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cinnamon, pepper, 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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