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Sauce

Green Tomato Catsup

A tomato-based condiment made with tomatoes, sugar, vinegar, pepper, salt, onion, and cloves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Green Tomato Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil the tomatoes until soft, then strain through a colander.

  2. In a pot, combine the strained tomatoes, sugar, vinegar, black pepper, salt, chopped onion, and ground cloves.

  3. Boil the mixture until it thickens and resembles marmalade.

  4. Bottle the catsup and seal 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. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

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

  3. Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  5. Tomato + clovetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes
Provide the main body and flavor of the ketchup once cooked down and strained.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the ketchup thicken as it cooks down.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the ketchup its tang and helps preserve it.
Onion
Adds savory depth and aroma to the cooked tomato base.

The step that matters

Boil the mixture until it thickens and resembles marmalade. Tomatoes contain a lot of water, and the cooking must drive off enough of it for the sauce to thicken. Stopping too early leaves a thin ketchup, while overcooking can scorch the sugar and sticks on the pot bottom.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, sugar, vinegar, 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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