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Sauce

Cold Catsup

An uncooked tomato condiment made with horseradish, celery, onions, brown sugar, spices and vinegar, sealed without cooking.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Horseradish and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,832 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Cold Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the tomatoes finely and drain them.

  2. Run the drained tomatoes through a sieve.

  3. Grate the horseradish and add it to the tomatoes.

Combine and seal

  1. Mix in the chopped celery, onions, brown sugar, coarse sea salt, mustard seed, black pepper, cloves, cinnamon, and red peppers.

  2. Stir in the vinegar until well combined.

  3. Seal the mixture without cooking.

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. Horseradish + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Celery + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Tomato + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes
Form the bulk of the ketchup and supply its base flavour and liquid.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and helps preserve the uncooked mixture.
Brown sugar
Provides sweetness that balances the acidity and salt.
White mustard seed
Adds pungency and a sharp, slightly bitter note to the sauce.
Horseradish
Contributes sharp heat and aroma that fade with time.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the sauce and draws flavour through the tomato mixture.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (horseradish, celery, onion, sugar, mustard, pepper, clove):

  1. Turnipfits better
  2. Lettucefits better
  3. Beetrootfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against horseradish, celery, onion, sugar, mustard, pepper, clove. 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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