Name: Tomato Catsup
Ingredients: 1 pail of tomatoes; 1 quart of vinegar; 6 tablespoons mustard; 6 tablespoons coarse sea salt; 6 tablespoons unground black pepper; 4 tablespoons allspice; 4 tablespoons cloves; red pepper to taste

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

Cut up the tomatoes.
Boil the tomatoes in a tin vessel.
Strain the mixture through a colander.

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.

Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together7,874 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Mustard + allspicetop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,928 recipes

Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).
Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together17,451 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together6,395 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
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: Forms the bulk of the sauce and supplies its body and sweetness.
Vinegar: Adds acidity that sharpens the flavor and helps preserve the sauce.
Mustard: Adds sharp, pungent flavor.
Allspice: Adds warm, aromatic spice flavor.
Cloves: Adds strong, aromatic spice flavor.

Swap the tomato

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

Horseradishfits better
Shallotfits better
Radishfits better
Tomatothe original

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