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Sauce

Tomato Catsup

A tomato-based condiment made by stewing tomatoes with spices, sugar, and vinegar, then boiling until thick.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Peel and slice the tomatoes, then stew them in their own juice until soft.

  2. Rub the mixture through a fine sieve to remove the seeds.

  3. Place the strained mixture over the fire and bring it to a boil.

Season and reduce

  1. Add salt, black pepper, cinnamon, ground cloves, cayenne pepper, sugar, and cider vinegar.

  2. Boil down the mixture until thick, stirring constantly to prevent burning.

Bottle

  1. Bottle the catsup 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. Cider + vinegartop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,431 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

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

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

  5. Pepper + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,890 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

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, pulp and flavour of the ketchup once cooked down.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the acidity of the vinegar and tomatoes.
Cider vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and helps preserve the finished sauce.
Salt
Seasons the sauce and sharpens the overall flavour.

The step that matters

Boil down the mixture until thick, stirring constantly. The sauce is thick and sugary, so it scorches easily on the bottom of the pan. Constant stirring prevents burning and lets water evaporate evenly until it thickens.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Horseradishfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

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