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Tomato Catsup

A preserved tomato sauce made by cooking tomatoes with vinegar, sugar, spices, and mustard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Tomato Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Slice and cook the tomatoes until soft.

  2. Run the cooked tomatoes through a sieve.

  3. Place the sieved tomatoes back on the stove and cook until partly boiled down.

  4. Add the vinegar and cook until thick.

Season and bottle

  1. Stir in the brown sugar, salt, cinnamon, cloves, black pepper, red pepper, and mustard mixture.

  2. Boil for two to three minutes and then bottle.

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Cinnamon + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,581 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  5. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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, pulp and flavour of the ketchup.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens flavour and helps preserve the sauce.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the acidity of the vinegar and tomatoes.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the sauce and enhances the tomato flavour.
Mustard
Adds a sharp, pungent note that supports the spices.

The step that matters

Cook the sieved tomatoes until partly boiled down. Tomatoes contain a lot of water, so reducing them concentrates flavour and thickens the sauce. Adding vinegar before enough reduction leaves the ketchup thin and watery.

Swap the tomato

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

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

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