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Tomato Catsup

A tomato-based sauce made with pepper, salt, mustard, allspice, red pepper, and cider vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,928 recipes. Both carry methyleugenol, which smells clove, spice. The science ↓

Tomato Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Add black pepper, coarse sea salt, mustard, allspice, and red pepper to the tomatoes.

  2. Boil the mixture until the tomatoes are soft.

  3. Rub the mixture through a sieve.

  4. Boil again until thick.

  5. Stir in the cider vinegar.

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

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  2. Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Cider + vinegartop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,431 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

  4. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  5. Mustard + vinegartop 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
Provide the main body, moisture and flavour that the mixture cooks down into a thick sauce.
Cider vinegar
Adds acidity and sharpness that balance the sweetness of the cooked tomatoes.
Mustard
Adds pungency and a sharp, savoury flavour to the sauce.
Black pepper
Adds sharp, aromatic heat that gives the ketchup its savoury depth.

The step that matters

Boil again until thick. Tomatoes contain a lot of water, and cooking them down concentrates flavour and thickens the sauce. Stopping too early leaves it thin and watery, while overcooking can make it dense and sticky.

Swap the tomato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, mustard, allspice, cider, vinegar. 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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