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Sauce

Tomato Catsup

A tomato-based sauce seasoned with peppers, salt, spices, onions, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,928 recipes. Both carry methyleugenol, which smells clove, spice. The science ↓

Tomato Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and cook

  1. Chop the tomatoes and red peppers.

  2. Boil for 1 hour.

  3. Strain through a colander.

Season and finish

  1. Add salt, black pepper, allspice, mustard, and chopped onions.

  2. Boil until thoroughly cooked.

  3. Add vinegar to achieve desired consistency.

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. Allspice + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,928 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  2. Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Mustard + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 sauce and supply the base flavour and liquid.
Red peppers
Add sweetness and body to the sauce as they cook down.
Onions
Add savoury depth and aromatic flavour to the sauce.
Mustard
Adds sharp, pungent flavour that balances the sweetness of the tomatoes.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens flavour and helps preserve the sauce.

The step that matters

Boil until thoroughly cooked. Long boiling evaporates water and concentrates the sugars and acids, thickening the sauce. Stopping early leaves it thin and raw-tasting.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, allspice, mustard, onion, vinegar):

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Broccolifits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, allspice, mustard, onion, 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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