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Tomato Catsup

A thick tomato sauce made by boiling tomatoes and onions, seasoned with salt, mustard, pepper, spices, sugar, horseradish, and celery seed.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove 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 ↓

Tomato Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the ketchup

  1. Combine tomatoes and onions in a kettle.

  2. Boil for one hour.

  3. Strain the mixture and return it to the kettle.

  4. Add salt, mustard, black pepper, cayenne pepper, allspice, cinnamon, cloves, and brown sugar.

  5. Simmer gently for four hours.

  6. Stir in horseradish and celery seed to taste just before removing from heat.

Cool and bottle

  1. Let cool and bottle.

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Allspice + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Mustard + allspicetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,928 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  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

Ripe tomatoes
Form the main body of the ketchup and provide its base flavor and liquid.
Onions
Add savory depth and aromatic sweetness as they cook down into the sauce.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the acidity of the tomatoes.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the sauce and helps draw out flavor during long simmering.

The step that matters

Simmer gently for four hours. Long, gentle simmering evaporates water and thickens the sauce. Too much heat can scorch the sugars and tomato solids on the bottom of the kettle, leaving a burnt taste, so stir often and keep the heat low.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Horseradishfits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

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