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Tomato Catsup

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice 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

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Boil the tomatoes until soft.

  2. Squeeze the cooked tomatoes through a fine sieve.

Make the ketchup

  1. In a large pot, combine the tomato puree with cider vinegar, salt, cloves, allspice, cayenne pepper, and black pepper.

  2. Chop the onions finely.

  3. Add the chopped onions to the mixture when it is about half done.

  4. Boil for about 2 hours, or until thick.

Bottle

  1. Fill bottles with the mixture, leaving space at the top.

  2. Pour a little vinegar into the top of each bottle to prevent mold.

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Allspice + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Cider + vinegartop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,431 recipes

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

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

Tomatoes
Provide the main body, flavor and bulk of the ketchup once cooked and sieved.
Cider vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the ketchup its tang and helps preserve it.
Onions
Add savory depth and body as they soften during the long simmer.
Salt
Seasons the ketchup and helps preserve it.
Cloves
Add warm, aromatic spice flavor to the ketchup.
Allspice
Adds warm, aromatic spice flavor to the ketchup.

The step that matters

Boil until thick. Tomato mixtures thicken as water evaporates during long simmering. Stopping too early leaves a thin sauce, while cooking too long can scorch the bottom of the pot, so stir and watch the consistency.

Swap the onion

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

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

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