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Sauce

Cold Catsup

Cold Catsup is a tomato-based sauce made with tomatoes, salt, horseradish, sugar, pepper, cinnamon, onions, celery, red peppers, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and celery are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,377 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Cold Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Sprinkle sliced tomatoes with salt and let stand for 2 hours.

  2. Drain the tomatoes.

Make the ketchup

  1. Add horseradish, salt, sugar, black pepper, cinnamon, onions, celery, and red peppers to the tomatoes. Mix well and add vinegar.

  2. Make cold and can.

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

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

  2. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  3. Horseradish + celerytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together835 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Horseradish + cinnamontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together515 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Horseradish + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,784 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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 provide its main body and flavor.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the acidity of the vinegar and tomatoes.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the ketchup its tang and helps preserve it.
Celery
Adds vegetable bulk and a faint savory, herbal note.
Onions
Adds savory depth and aromatic flavor to the sauce.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, horseradish, sugar, pepper, cinnamon, celery, vinegar. 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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