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Tomato Catsup

A sweet and spicy tomato sauce made by boiling tomatoes, onions, peppers, and spices, then thickening and adding vinegar.

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

Cook the base

  1. Boil the tomatoes, onions, and red peppers together until soft enough to pass through a sieve.

  2. Strain the mixture.

Season and thicken

  1. Add sugar, salt, mustard, cinnamon, and the cloth with cloves.

  2. Cook until thick enough.

Finish and seal

  1. Stir in the cider vinegar and cook for five more minutes.

  2. Seal while hot.

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

  4. Mustard + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,581 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

Tomatoes
Provide the bulk, body and tang that the sauce is built on.
Onions
Add savory depth and aroma as they soften and break down.
Red peppers
Add sweetness and body as they cook down into the purée.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the acidity of the tomatoes and vinegar.
Cider vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that brightens the sauce and helps preserve it.
Cinnamon
Adds warm aroma that rounds out the tomato flavor.

The step that matters

Cook until thick enough. This is the step most likely to go wrong, since the sauce must reduce enough to hold its body without scorching. Tomatoes thicken as water evaporates and solids concentrate, so steady heat and frequent stirring matter.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Horseradishfits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Onionthe original

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