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Salad

Cold Catsup

A tomato-based cold ketchup with salt, sugar, mustard seed, horseradish, celery, spices, and cider vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and horseradish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,832 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Cold Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel and cut tomatoes into small pieces, then drain them in a sieve.

Make and rest

  1. Combine salt, sugar, mustard seed, horseradish, celery, black pepper, cinnamon, allspice, mace, and vinegar in a large bowl, then mix well and let sit for a week before using.

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. Mustard + horseradishtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Mustard + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Mustard + allspicetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,928 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Tomato + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Ripe tomatoes
Provide the bulk and main body of the ketchup.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out and seasons the mixture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the vinegar and salt.
Mustard seed
Adds pungent flavor and a slight texture to the sauce.
Strong cider vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the ketchup its sharp tang and helps preserve it.

The step that matters

Letting it sit for a week. The mixture needs time for the salt, sugar, vinegar and spices to meld and mellow. Using it early gives a harsher, less balanced flavor.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Beetrootfits better
  2. Turnipfits better
  3. Parsnipfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, mustard, horseradish, celery, pepper, cinnamon, allspice. 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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