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Recette De Ketchup

A homemade tomato ketchup made with ripe tomatoes, sea salt, vinegar, butter, and whole spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,063 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Recette De Ketchup

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

  1. Peel and crush the tomatoes by hand to remove the seeds.

  2. Add the coarse sea salt and let it rest overnight.

Cook and strain

  1. Add the spices and vinegar, then the butter.

  2. Boil for 30 minutes and strain while hot.

  3. Make sure the spices are whole and in small muslin bags to preserve the ketchup's color.

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. Tomato + vinegartop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,063 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  2. Tomato + buttertop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,918 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Vinegar + buttertop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,513 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes
Provide the main body, bulk and fresh tomato flavour of the ketchup.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the crushed tomatoes overnight and seasons the base.
Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that balances the sweetness of the tomatoes.
Butter
Adds fat that softens the flavour and gives a rounder mouthfeel.
Spices
Contribute aroma and warm background flavour without clouding the sauce when bagged.

The step that matters

Boil for 30 minutes and strain while hot. Heat softens the tomato solids so they pass easily through a strainer. As the mixture cools it thickens and becomes much harder to strain smoothly, so straining promptly keeps the texture fine.

Swap the tomato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, butter. 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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