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Tomato Catsup

A preserved tomato sauce made with tomatoes, vinegar, sugar, spices, and sherry or whisky.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Tomato Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Wipe each tomato carefully and cut them in halves or quarters.

  2. Boil the tomatoes in a porcelain kettle over medium heat for 30 minutes.

  3. Strain the mixture and boil until one-third has evaporated.

Make the ketchup

  1. Add the vinegar and boil away another third.

  2. Stir in the brown sugar, salt, black pepper, cayenne pepper, allspice, mustard, ginger, cloves, and garlic (all ground fine). Mix well and allow to boil.

  3. Remove from heat and add the sherry wine or whisky.

  4. Heat again to boiling point and let it simmer until thick.

Bottle and store

  1. Bottle the catsup, seal the corks, and store in a cool place once cooled.

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. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Ginger + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Allspice + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,620 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Allspice + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,928 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Pepper + clovetop 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

Tomatoes
Provide the main body and flavor, and break down into the thick base of the sauce.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens flavor and helps preserve the sauce.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the acidity of the vinegar and tomatoes.
Salt
Seasons the sauce and enhances the flavors of the other ingredients.
Black pepper
Adds a sharp, pungent warmth that rounds out the spice blend.
Sherry wine or whisky
Adds aromatic depth to the finished sauce, added off the heat near the end.

The step that matters

Reducing the sauce until thick. Evaporating water concentrates the tomato solids and sugars, so the ketchup sets to the right thickness; stopping too early leaves it thin and watery.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, sugar, pepper, allspice, mustard, ginger, clove. 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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