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Sauce

Tomato Catsup

A preserved tomato sauce made with tomatoes, salt, vinegar, spices, and onions, simmered and bottled.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and clove 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

  1. Stew the tomatoes until they can be strained through a sieve.

  2. Add salt, vinegar, allspice, cloves, cayenne pepper, mustard, ginger, and the boiled onions to the pulp, mix well and simmer slowly for 4 hours.

  3. Strain the mixture and bottle 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. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Clove + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Allspice + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,620 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Allspice + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,928 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes
Provide the bulk of the pulp, which thickens and gives the ketchup its body and flavour.
Onions
Add savoury sweetness and body once boiled soft and mixed into the pulp.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and helps preserve the finished ketchup.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the sauce and draws out moisture during the long simmer.

The step that matters

Simmer slowly for 4 hours. A long, gentle simmer evaporates water and concentrates the tomato pulp into a thick sauce. Too high a heat can scorch the bottom and give a burnt taste.

Swap the tomato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, allspice, clove, pepper, mustard, ginger, onion. 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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