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Tomato Catsup

A tomato sauce made by boiling tomatoes, mixing with vinegar, spices, and onion or garlic rings, then boiling again and bottling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Tomato Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Boil the ripe tomatoes until soft.

  2. Squeeze the tomatoes through a wire sieve.

Cook the ketchup

  1. In a large pot, combine the tomato puree with vinegar, salt, cloves, allspice, cayenne pepper, black pepper, and onion or garlic rings.

  2. Mix all ingredients together and boil for 2 hours.

  3. Bottle the catsup without straining.

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 + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Allspice + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

  5. Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 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, flavor and thick pulp of the ketchup.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the sauce its tang and helps preserve it.
Salt
Seasons the sauce and draws out moisture, concentrating the flavor.
Onions or garlic
Add savory aroma and depth to the sauce as it cooks.

The step that matters

Boil for 2 hours. Long simmering evaporates water and concentrates the tomato solids, so the sauce thickens and its flavors blend. Too short a boil leaves it thin and watery.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, vinegar, clove, allspice, pepper. 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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