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Cold Tomato Catsup

A cold tomato catsup made by boiling tomatoes with vinegar, salt, mustard, peppers, spices, and horseradish, then straining and bottling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 Tomato Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the ripe tomatoes and place them in a large pot.

  2. Add the vinegar, salt, ground mustard seed, chopped red peppers, black pepper, celery seed, and grated horseradish.

Cook

  1. Boil the mixture for 3 hours, stirring continuously.

Strain and bottle

  1. Once cool, strain the mixture through a coarse cloth.

  2. Bottle the catsup tightly and store it.

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  4. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  5. Celery + horseradishtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together835 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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 sauce and, as they cook down, its body and thickness.
Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that brightens the flavor and helps preserve the sauce.
Ground mustard seed
Adds a sharp, pungent bite.
Red peppers
Add mild sweetness and fresh pepper flavor.
Grated horseradish
Adds a sharp, pungent heat.

The step that matters

Boiling for 3 hours with continuous stirring. Long boiling evaporates water and concentrates the tomato solids into a thick sauce. Without constant stirring, the thickening mixture can settle and scorch on the bottom of the pot, leaving a burnt taste throughout the batch.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Lettucefits better
  2. Broccolifits better
  3. Radishfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, mustard, pepper, celery, horseradish. 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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