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Tomato Catsup

A homemade tomato catsup made by boiling tomatoes, straining, and simmering with spices, vinegar, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and clove 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

  1. Boil ripe tomatoes until soft.

  2. Strain the tomatoes through a fine sieve to extract the juice.

Make the ketchup

  1. In a pot, combine 1 gallon of the juice with salt, black pepper, mustard, allspice, cloves, red pepper, vinegar, and sugar.

  2. Boil the mixture for one hour.

  3. Add the spices and continue boiling until done.

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Mustard + allspicetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,928 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  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

Ripe tomatoes
Provides the main body, moisture and fruity base that the sauce is built from.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and balances the sweetness.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that rounds out the acidity and tomato flavour.
Allspice
Adds warm, aromatic spice notes to the sauce.
Cloves
Adds strong aromatic spice that deepens the overall flavour.

The step that matters

Boil the mixture for one hour. Long simmering evaporates water and concentrates the tomato solids, so the sauce thickens and its flavours blend. Stopping early leaves it thin and watery.

Swap the tomato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, mustard, allspice, clove, vinegar, sugar. 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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