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Tomato Catsup

A preserved tomato sauce made with tomatoes, onions, vinegar, spices, and brown sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and clove 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 Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the tomatoes

  1. Combine tomatoes and onions in an enamel kettle and boil until soft.

  2. Mash the mixture and strain it through a coarse sieve.

Season and finish

  1. Add vinegar, coarse sea salt, mace, black pepper, cayenne pepper, ground cloves, and brown sugar.

  2. Mix well and boil slowly for two hours.

  3. Bottle and seal the catsup.

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Mace + clovetop 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. Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  5. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 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

Tomatoes
Provide the bulk, body and tomato flavour that the sauce is built on.
Onions
Add savoury depth and body as they soften and break down into the sauce.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and helps preserve the finished sauce.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the acidity and rounds out the spices.

The step that matters

The long slow boil. The two-hour simmer thickens the sauce as water evaporates and concentrates its flavours. Sugar and tomato solids can scorch on the base of the pan if the heat runs too high.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Cinnamonfits better
  4. Macethe original

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