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Ripe Tomato Catsup

A preserved tomato sauce made with tomatoes, onions, green pepper, vinegar, sugar, and spices, cooked and bottled.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and celery are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,169 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Ripe Tomato Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the tomatoes.

  2. Slice the tomatoes.

  3. Add the chopped onions and green pepper.

  4. Cook until soft.

Strain

  1. Press the mixture through a sieve.

  2. Wash the kettle.

  3. Return the mixture to the kettle.

Simmer and bottle

  1. Cook for 2 hours.

  2. Add vinegar, sugar, salt, mustard seed, celery seed, cloves, spice, and cinnamon tied in a cloth.

  3. Cook for 1 hour longer.

  4. Bottle and seal.

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. Mustard + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Tomato + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 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
Form the bulk of the sauce and provide its body and base flavor.
Onions
Add savory depth and aromatic background flavor to the sauce.
Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that brightens the flavor and helps preserve the sauce.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the acidity of the vinegar and tomatoes.
Mustard seed
Contributes a pungent, tangy bite to the sauce.
Cinnamon
Adds warm aromatic spice that rounds out the flavor.

The step that matters

Press the mixture through a sieve. Pressing removes tomato skins and seeds, which would otherwise leave the ketchup coarse and grainy instead of smooth.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Lettucefits better
  3. Horseradishfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, pepper, vinegar, sugar, mustard, celery, 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.

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