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Sauce

Cherry Catsup

A sweet cherry sauce made by boiling cherry juice with sugar, cloves, and cinnamon until thickened.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon 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 ↓

Cherry Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine the cherry juice, sugar, ground cloves, and ground cinnamon in a saucepan.

  2. Boil the mixture until it thickens into a syrup.

  3. Pour the syrup into bottles and seal.

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 + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Cherry + cinnamontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together551 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Cherry + clovetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together474 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  4. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Cherry + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Cherry juice
Provides the fruit base and liquid that reduces into the syrup, carrying the cherry flavor.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and, as the liquid evaporates, helps the mixture thicken into a syrup.
Ground cloves
Adds a warm, pungent aroma and spice flavor to the ketchup.
Ground cinnamon
Adds a sweet, woody aroma and warm spice flavor to the ketchup.

The step that matters

Boil until it thickens into a syrup. Boiling drives off water, concentrating the sugar and fruit solids. Stop too early and the ketchup stays thin; cook too long and the sugar can darken, scorch or set too thick once cooled.

Swap the cherry

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Quincefits better
  4. Cherrythe original

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