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Catsups and Sauces

A preserved tomato sauce made with tomatoes, salt, spices, sugar, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 20,806 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Catsups and Sauces

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Select perfect tomatoes.

  2. Cook the tomatoes in a porcelain pot.

  3. Sprinkle the tomatoes with coarse sea salt.

  4. Let the tomatoes stand overnight.

  5. Strain the mixture.

Season and bottle

  1. Add your choice of spices and a little sugar.

  2. Bottle the catsup in glass or stone containers, avoiding tin cans.

  3. Do not fill the bottles completely.

  4. Top off the bottles with hot vinegar.

  5. Add vinegar.

Keep and rescue

  1. If mould appears, carefully remove it.

  2. If the catsup is too thick or you fear it may sour, scald 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. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  2. Tomato + vinegartop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,063 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Tomato + sugartop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,667 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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, flavour and liquid that become the sauce.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the tomatoes and seasons the mixture before straining.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the acidity of the tomatoes and vinegar.
Hot vinegar
Adds acidity that helps preserve the ketchup and sharpens its flavour.

The step that matters

Top off the bottles with hot vinegar. Leaving no gap and filling with hot vinegar limits air and microbes in the bottle, which helps slow spoilage and mould growth.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Cucumberfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, 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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