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Tomato Catsup

A preserved tomato sauce made by boiling tomatoes and onions, then adding vinegar, salt, and spices, and bottling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon 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

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Place tomatoes and onions in a large kettle and boil until tender.

  2. Rub the mixture through a sieve and return it to the kettle.

Season and cook

  1. Add cider vinegar and coarse sea salt, then sweeten to taste.

  2. Put the spices in a thin bag and tie it up, then boil the mixture with the spices.

  3. Cook for 2 hours or until slightly thick, stirring constantly.

Bottle

  1. Seal tightly in bottles.

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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 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. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 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

Ripe tomatoes
Provide the main body, moisture and tomato flavour that the sauce is built on.
Onions
Add savoury depth and sweetness that rounds out the tomato flavour.
Cider vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and helps keep the ketchup stable.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the sauce and helps draw out moisture and preserve it.

The step that matters

Cooking down until slightly thick. Long simmering evaporates water and concentrates flavour and body. Stirring constantly prevents the thick tomato mixture from scorching on the bottom of the kettle.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, cider, vinegar, clove, cinnamon, allspice, mustard. 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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