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Tomato Catsup

A preserved tomato condiment made with tomatoes, onions, vinegar, sugar, spices, and red pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Tomato Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Boil the tomatoes and onions, then strain through a strainer.

Make the ketchup

  1. Add vinegar, sugar, salt, ginger, nutmeg, mustard, whole cloves, cinnamon, and red pepper.

  2. Tie the cloves and cinnamon in a small sack.

  3. Boil the mixture until it thickens.

Bottle

  1. Bottle and seal the catsup.

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. Nutmeg + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 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. Ginger + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

  5. Vinegar + mustardtop 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

Tomatoes
Form the bulk of the ketchup, providing the body and the main flavour.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens flavour and helps preserve the finished ketchup.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the acidity and rounds out the tomato flavour.
Onions
Add savoury depth and aroma to the tomato base.

The step that matters

Boil the mixture until it thickens. Tomatoes contain a lot of water, and the ketchup only thickens as that water evaporates during a long, steady boil. Stopping early leaves it thin and more prone to spoiling.

Swap the tomato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, vinegar, sugar, ginger, nutmeg, mustard, 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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