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Tomato Catsup

A tomato sauce made with tomatoes, spices, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,038 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Tomato Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

Salt the tomatoes

  1. Scatter 12 ounces of table salt over 20 fine tomatoes on a dish and let them sit for 3 days.

Make the ketchup

  1. Boil together mace, cloves, black pepper, Jamaica pepper, long pepper, ginger, mustard seed, capsicums, garlic, and horseradish in 1 quart of pickling vinegar for 30 minutes, skimming as needed.

  2. Peel the tomatoes, add them to the mixture, and boil for an additional 30 minutes.

  3. Strain the mixture through a sieve and bottle it the next day.

Age

  1. Cork well and seal the bottles. Allow the catsup to age for 6 months for best flavor.

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 + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Tomato + capsicumtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,520 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Pepper + capsicumtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,571 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Tomato + garlictop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,076 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  5. Clove + peppertop 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

Fine tomatoes
Form the base of the ketchup, providing the bulk and body of the sauce.
Table salt
Draws moisture out of the tomatoes and helps preserve them during the long resting period.
Pickling vinegar
Acts as the liquid that extracts flavor from the spices and provides acidity for preservation.
Garlic
Adds pungent aroma and savory depth to the sauce.
Capsicums
Contribute sweet, vegetal flavour and body to the cooked mixture.

The step that matters

Salting the tomatoes for 3 days. Salt draws water out of the tomatoes through osmosis, concentrating their flavor and firming the flesh. Too little time or too little salt leaves the mixture watery and under-seasoned, so the sauce may spoil or taste flat.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, clove, pepper, ginger, mustard, capsicum, garlic):

  1. Cuminfits better
  2. Turmericfits better
  3. Corianderfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, clove, pepper, ginger, mustard, capsicum, garlic. 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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