Skip to main content
Sauce

Tomato Catsup or Soy

A preserved tomato sauce made with tomatoes, mustard, salt, pepper, allspice, red pepper, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 or Soy

Ingredients

Directions

Make the ketchup

  1. Chop the tomatoes and combine them with mustard, salt, black pepper, allspice, and red pepper in a pot.

  2. Simmer the mixture for 3 hours.

  3. Strain the mixture through a sieve.

  4. Add vinegar and simmer for an additional 10 minutes.

Bottle and store

  1. Pour the catsup into small bottles, cork them tightly, and store in a cool place.

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

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

  4. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Ripe tomatoes
Provide the main body, sweetness and liquid that the long simmer reduces into a thick sauce.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and helps preserve the sauce.
Mixed mustard
Adds sharp, pungent flavour and some emulsifying character to the sauce.

The step that matters

Simmering the mixture for 3 hours. Long simmering evaporates water and concentrates the tomato solids, giving the sauce its thick body and deep flavour. Stopping too early leaves it thin and watery.

Swap the tomato

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

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

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

More tomato ketchup recipes

Green 26 See all 523 →

You might also like

Mixed MustardMixed Mustard9 recipesWine Sauce (for stewed fruit)Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)186 recipesCaper SauceCaper Sauce180 recipesBrown SauceBrown Sauce141 recipes