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Sauce

Tomato Catsup

A thick tomato sauce made by boiling tomatoes, onions, spices, and vinegar, then cooling and bottling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Tomato Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pulp

  1. Boil the tomatoes in a kettle for 1 hour.

  2. Remove the tomatoes, press, and strain the pulp through a sieve.

  3. Return the pulp to a kettle.

Season and cook

  1. Add the grated onions.

  2. Add the brown sugar, ground mustard, salt, mace, cloves, black pepper and green pepper.

  3. Mix the seasoning with the pulp and boil for 5 hours, stirring frequently.

  4. Just before removing from heat, stir in the vinegar.

Bottle

  1. Let it cool, then bottle and seal.

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

  3. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  5. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Ripe tomatoes
Form the bulk of the pulp, providing the main body and moisture that the sauce reduces.
Onions
Add savory depth and aroma, and dissolve into the sauce as it cooks.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the sauce thicken and darken as it cooks.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavor and balances the sweetness.

The step that matters

Stirring during the 5-hour boil. Sugars and tomato solids are prone to scorching on the bottom of the pan during a long reduction. Frequent stirring keeps the mixture from burning and lets it thicken evenly.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, onion, sugar, mustard, clove, pepper, vinegar. 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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