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Catsups and Sauces

A fruit ketchup made by cooking fruit pulp with sugar and spices, then reducing and adding vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Catsups and Sauces

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pulp

  1. Select perfect fruit and cook it in porcelain, never metal.

  2. Strain the fruit to obtain the pulp.

Cook and season

  1. Add 1 pound of sugar, mace, cinnamon, cloves, and peppercorns to the pulp.

  2. Boil the mixture down to one third of its volume, then skim off the spices.

  3. Add sugar and boil until thick.

Finish and bottle

  1. Adjust consistency with hot vinegar and bottle for use.

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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Peach + cinnamontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together625 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  3. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Peach + clovetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together280 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  5. Mace + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

What each ingredient does

Fruit pulp
Provides the main body, flavour and colour of the ketchup as it cooks down.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and, as it boils down, helps thicken the ketchup and preserve it.
Hot vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and helps preserve the finished ketchup.
Cinnamon
Adds warm aroma to the spiced flavour of the ketchup.
Cloves
Adds pungent aroma to the spiced flavour of the ketchup.

The step that matters

Boiling the mixture down. Reducing the pulp to one third of its volume concentrates sugar and fruit solids, which thickens the ketchup and helps it keep. Stopping too early leaves it thin and prone to spoiling, while overcooking can scorch the sugars.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (peach, sugar, cinnamon, clove, vinegar):

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Cardamomfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against peach, sugar, cinnamon, clove, 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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