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Tomato Catsup

A preserved tomato sauce made by boiling tomatoes, reducing the juice, adding spices, and sealing with vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 the juice

  1. Boil the tomatoes and strain them through a sieve to obtain the juice.

  2. Add 4 tablespoons of coarse sea salt, 4 tablespoons of ground black pepper, 2 tablespoons of allspice, and 8 tablespoons of mustard to the juice.

Cook the sauce

  1. Boil the tomato juice until it reduces by half.

  2. Add the spices except for the red pepper.

  3. Boil the red pepper with the tomatoes.

Bottle

  1. Add just enough vinegar to fill the neck of the bottle.

  2. Cork and seal the bottle.

Serve

  1. Thin the catsup with vinegar to taste when serving.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 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

Tomato juice
Forms the body of the sauce and thickens into a concentrated base as it reduces.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and balances the sweetness of the tomatoes.
Mustard
Adds pungent sharpness that cuts through the sweetness of the cooked tomatoes.
Allspice
Adds warm, aromatic flavour that rounds out the tomato base.
Black pepper
Adds sharp, woody heat that complements the tomato.
Red pepper
Adds gentle heat and aroma to the tomatoes as they cook.

The step that matters

Reduce the tomato juice by half. Boiling evaporates water, concentrating flavour and thickening the juice into the body of the ketchup. Because the sugars in the tomatoes can scorch on the base of the pan, the reduction needs close attention.

Swap the tomato

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

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

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