Skip to main content
Sauce

Good Tomato Catsup

A thick tomato sauce seasoned with salt, pepper, cloves, cinnamon, allspice, celery seed, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Good Tomato Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine all ingredients in a large pot.

  2. Bring to a boil and then reduce heat.

  3. Simmer until the mixture is reduced by half, stirring occasionally to prevent sticking.

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 + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Tomato + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Strained tomatoes
Provide the main body, moisture and tomato flavour of the ketchup.
Onions
Add savoury sweetness and aroma that build as the mixture simmers.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the sauce and draws out moisture during long simmering.
Good vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and helps preserve the sauce.

The step that matters

Simmer until reduced by half. Long, gentle simmering evaporates water and concentrates sugars and flavours, thickening the ketchup. Stirring often prevents scorching on the bottom of the pot, since tomato solids and sugars burn easily.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Mustardfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, pepper, clove, cinnamon, allspice, celery, 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.

More tomato ketchup recipes

Green 26 See all 523 →

You might also like

Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)186 recipesCaper SauceCaper Sauce180 recipesBrown SauceBrown Sauce141 recipesDutch SauceDutch Sauce74 recipes