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Sauce

Tomato Catsup

A fermented tomato sauce made with vinegar, spices, and tomatoes, strained and bottled.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,038 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Tomato Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the spiced vinegar

  1. In a pot, combine vinegar, mace, cloves, black pepper, Jamaica pepper, long pepper, ginger, mustard seed, and coarse sea salt.

  2. Boil the mixture for 30 minutes.

Cook and finish

  1. Peel the tomatoes and add them to the pot.

  2. Boil all ingredients together for another 30 minutes.

  3. Strain the mixture through a sieve.

  4. Bottle the catsup when it is cold.

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 + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Pepper + capsicumtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,571 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Mustard + garlictop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  5. Ginger + garlictop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,402 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes
Provide the bulk of the body, flavour and moisture for the ketchup.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the ketchup its sharp tang and helps preserve it.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the ketchup and draws out flavour from the other ingredients.

The step that matters

Boil all ingredients together for another 30 minutes. Long simmering softens the tomatoes and lets the spices and acid blend into the sauce. Cooking too briefly leaves a raw, watery flavour, while the reduction thickens the sauce.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Turmericfits better
  3. Cuminfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, clove, pepper, ginger, mustard, capsicum, garlic. 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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