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Tomato Ketchup

A tomato sauce made with tomatoes, spices, vinegar, and mustard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Tomato Ketchup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Slice the tomatoes and sprinkle a little coarse sea salt on each layer.

  2. Let them stand for twelve hours.

  3. Strain carefully to remove all the seeds.

Spice and cook

  1. Place the cloves, black pepper, and red pepper in a muslin bag.

  2. Add the broken mace to the strained tomatoes.

  3. Boil the mixture until it thickens.

Finish

  1. When cold, stir in the white wine vinegar and mustard.

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 + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

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

  4. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Clove + mustardtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,829 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

What each ingredient does

Ripe tomatoes
Provide the main body, flavour and liquid that the sauce is built from.
White wine vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and helps keep the ketchup stable.
Mustard
Adds sharp, pungent flavour that balances the sweetness of the tomatoes.
Whole cloves
Contribute warm, aromatic spice flavour as the mixture simmers.

The step that matters

Boil the mixture until it thickens. Tomato sauce thickens as water evaporates and pectin and solids concentrate. Stopping too early leaves it thin, while overcooking can scorch the sugars and make it bitter.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, clove, pepper, white wine, vinegar, mustard. 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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