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Tomato Catsup

A preserved tomato sauce made by boiling tomatoes, seasoning, reducing, and bottling 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 rub them through a sieve to obtain the juice.

Make the ketchup

  1. Add 4 tablespoons of salt, 4 tablespoons of ground black pepper, 2 tablespoons of allspice, 3 tablespoons of mustard, and 4 pods of red pepper to the juice.

  2. Boil the mixture until the tomato juice is reduced by half.

  3. Once cooled, add the spices except for the red pepper.

  4. Boil the red pepper with the tomatoes.

Bottle and serve

  1. Add just enough vinegar to bottle the mixture, filling the neck of the bottle with vinegar.

  2. Cork and seal the bottle.

  3. Thin with vinegar 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 base of the sauce and provides its body and bulk.
Vinegar
Adds sharpness that balances the sweetness of the tomatoes and helps preserve the sauce.
Mustard
Adds a sharp, pungent tang that rounds out the flavor.
Allspice
Contributes warm, aromatic spice notes.
Ground black pepper
Adds sharp aroma and gentle background heat.
Red pepper
Adds heat and a pungent, peppery flavor.

The step that matters

Reducing the tomato juice by half. Boiling evaporates water, concentrating the tomato flavor and thickening the sauce. Stopping early leaves it thin and diluted, while the flavors of the spices become more intense as the liquid reduces.

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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