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Sauce

Tomato Catsup

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and capsicum match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,520 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Tomato Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare 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, gin, mustard seed, capsicums, garlic, and horseradish for 30 minutes, skimming as needed.

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

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

Bottle and age

  1. Cork well and seal the bottles.

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

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  4. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Mustard + garlictop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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 and flavor of the ketchup once salted and cooked down.
Table salt
Draws water out of the tomatoes over three days, concentrating their flavor and firming their texture.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavor and helps preserve the finished ketchup.
Garlic
Contributes pungent aroma and savory depth to the boiled mixture.

The step that matters

Salting the tomatoes for 3 days. Salt draws moisture out of the tomatoes through osmosis, concentrating their flavor and reducing the water that would otherwise thin the ketchup. Leaving them too briefly or too long changes the final texture and taste.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cuminfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Basilfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, clove, pepper, gin, 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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