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Homemade Tomato Catsup

A homemade tomato ketchup made by cooking tomatoes, onions, peppers, spices, sugar, salt, vinegar, and paprika until thick.

From the Recipes Wiki (Fandom) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and 3,375 recipes mention both. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

The recipe

Timeabout 1 hour

Ingredients

Directions

Make the ketchup base

  1. Cook tomatoes, onions and pepper until soft and press through a sieve.

  2. Cook about 1 hour until volume is reduced about one-half.

  3. Add spices in a bag, sugar and salt to tomato mixture.

  4. Cook 25 minutes, stirring frequently.

Finish and jar

  1. Add vinegar and paprika and cook until thick, stirring to prevent sticking.

  2. Pour hot into jars leaving ⅛ inch head space.

  3. Seal and process 10 minutes.

Recipe from the Recipes Wiki (Fandom).

This recipe comes from the Recipes Wiki on Fandom and is licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Our formatting and summaries are shared under the same licence.

Steps grouped into stages for easier reading; the method is the source's own.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Tomato + celerytop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together3,375 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Allspice + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Celery + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together4,160 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Pepper + celerytop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together16,001 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Pepper + allspicetop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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, flavour and liquid that reduces into the thick ketchup.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the acidity of the tomatoes and vinegar.
White vinegar
Adds acidity that gives tang and helps preserve the finished ketchup.
White onions
Add savoury depth and aroma as they soften into the tomato base.
Paprika
Adds colour and a mild, sweet pepper aroma to the ketchup.

The step that matters

Reducing the tomato mixture until thick. Cooking long enough to reduce the volume by about half concentrates the flavour and gives the ketchup its body. Stirring often prevents the sugars and solids from scorching on the bottom of the pot.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, pepper, celery, mustard, allspice, cinnamon, sugar):

  1. Capsicumbetter flavor fit
  2. Carrotbetter flavor fit
  3. Horseradishbetter flavor fit
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, pepper, celery, mustard, allspice, cinnamon, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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