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Sauce

Tomato Catsup

A preserved tomato sauce made by simmering tomatoes with spices, then reducing and adding 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 the tomatoes

  1. Wash and slice the tomatoes. Place them in a large pot and let them stew gently until soft, without stirring.

  2. Strain the juice through a sieve and return it to the pot.

Season and reduce

  1. Add the cloves, allspice, mace, salt, and cayenne. Bring to a boil and reduce to half the original quantity.

Finish and bottle

  1. The next day, strain out the spices. For every pint of juice, add ½ cup of vinegar and bottle 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. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Allspice + macetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Tomato + clovetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  5. Tomato + allspicetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together670 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes
Provide the bulk of the juice and the base flavor of the ketchup.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens flavor and helps preserve the bottled ketchup.
Cloves
Contribute warm, aromatic spice notes to the sauce.
Allspice
Adds warm, aromatic spice flavor to the sauce.
Mace
Adds a delicate, aromatic spice flavor to the sauce.

The step that matters

Reduce to half the original quantity. Boiling evaporates water and concentrates the tomato flavor and natural sugars, giving the ketchup body and depth. Stopping early leaves it thin and watery.

Swap the tomato

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

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

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