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Tomato Catsup

A sauce made from baked tomatoes, shallots, garlic, spices, vinegar, and citrus juices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Tomato Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pulp

  1. Bake the tomatoes in jars until tender.

  2. Strain off the water and pass the pulp through a sieve.

Season and cook

  1. Add shallots, garlic, coarse sea salt, white pepper, chili powder, and vinegar to the pulp.

  2. Boil the mixture until soft, then pass it through a sieve again.

  3. Add the lemon juice and Seville orange juice to the pulp.

  4. Boil again until it reaches the consistency of thick cream.

Bottle

  1. Once cooled, bottle the catsup, cork, and seal well.

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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  3. Shallot + garlictop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,000 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Shallot + lemontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,523 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Garlic + lemontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,893 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

Ripe tomatoes
Provide the main pulp, which is cooked down to form the body of the ketchup.
Shallots
Add savory aromatic flavor that builds depth in the sauce.
Garlic
Adds pungent aromatic flavor that mellows during boiling.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavor and helps preserve the sauce.
Seville orange juice
Adds bright acidity and citrus aroma to balance the sweetness of the tomatoes.

The step that matters

Boiling to thick cream consistency. Boiling reduces water and concentrates the pulp, so the sauce thickens as it cools. Stopping too early leaves it thin, while overcooking can make it too stiff and dull in flavor.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, shallot, garlic, vinegar, lemon, orange):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, shallot, garlic, vinegar, lemon, orange. 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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