Name: Gkeen Tomato Catsup
Ingredients: 1 peck tomatoes, chopped fine; water (for boiling); 6 green peppers, chopped; 2 quarts vinegar; 1 pound sugar; 1 teacup coarse sea salt (formerly 'bay salt'); 1 teaspoon black pepper; cloves (to taste); cinnamon (to taste)

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 ↓

Gkeen Tomato Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

Chop the tomatoes finely and drain for 1 hour.
Put the tomatoes in a vessel, cover with water, and boil until tender.
Drain for another 30 minutes.

Make the ketchup

Chop the green peppers and mix with the tomatoes.
In a pot, combine vinegar, sugar, salt, black pepper, cloves, and cinnamon.
Boil the mixture and pour it hot over the tomatoes.

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.

Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,189 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).
Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together17,451 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together17,923 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Pepper + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together4,890 recipes

Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).
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

Tomatoes: Form the bulk of the sauce and provide its body, sweetness and tomato flavour.
Vinegar: Adds sharp acidity that brightens the flavour and helps preserve the finished sauce.
Sugar: Balances the sharpness of the vinegar and rounds out the tomato flavour.
Green peppers: Add vegetal flavour and texture to the mixture.
Cinnamon: Adds warm, aromatic spice notes to the sauce.

The step that matters

Drain the tomatoes well. Tomatoes release a lot of watery juice. Draining them thoroughly before adding the hot vinegar mixture keeps the sauce thick and stops it from becoming thin and diluted.

Swap the tomato

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

Capsicumfits better
Mustardfits better
Sweet potatofits better
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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Gkeen Tomato Catsup