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Sauce

Green Tomato Catsup

A fermented tomato condiment made with green tomatoes, peppers, vinegar, sugar, salt, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Green Tomato Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Chop the tomatoes finely and let them drain for 1 hour.

  2. Place the tomatoes in a pot, cover with water, and boil until tender.

  3. Drain the tomatoes for another 30 minutes.

  4. Chop the green peppers and mix with the tomatoes.

Make the ketchup

  1. In a separate pot, combine vinegar, sugar, salt, black pepper, cloves, and cinnamon.

  2. Boil the mixture for a few minutes, then pour it hot over the tomatoes and peppers.

  3. Bottle the catsup while hot, ensuring it is not too thick to pour.

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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

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

  4. Pepper + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,890 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  5. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Green tomatoes
Provide the bulk and body of the ketchup once cooked down and softened.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the ketchup its tang and helps preserve it.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharp acidity of the vinegar.
Green peppers
Add fresh, vegetal flavor and some texture to the sauce.

The step that matters

Bottle the catsup while hot, ensuring it is not too thick to pour.. Pouring the sauce hot keeps it fluid and helps seal the bottles while warm. If the mixture cools and thickens too much, it becomes hard to pour and may not fill or seal well.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Tomatothe original

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