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Cold Catsup

A cold tomato-based condiment with horseradish, mustard seeds, sugar, spices, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Horseradish and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,832 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Cold Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Chop the tomatoes finely and drain them.

  2. Mix all the ingredients together thoroughly.

  3. Bottle the mixture without cooking.

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. Horseradish + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Horseradish + cinnamontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together515 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Clove + macetop 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
Provides the bulk and liquid body of the catsup.
Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that gives the sauce its tang and helps keep it stable.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar and horseradish.
Mustard seeds
Add a sharp, pungent bite to the sauce.
Horseradish
Adds sharp, pungent heat to the sauce.

The step that matters

Bottle the mixture without cooking. Because the catsup is not cooked, it relies on its vinegar and salt for acidity and keeping quality, and its flavour stays raw and sharp. Cooking would change the texture and flavour, so the mixture should be bottled as it is once combined.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Cardamomfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, horseradish, mustard, sugar, pepper, cinnamon, clove. 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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