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Sauce

Gooseberry Catsup

A sweet and tart sauce made from boiled gooseberries, sugar, spices, vinegar, and strained into a bottle.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove 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 ↓

Gooseberry Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the base

  1. Boil the gooseberries and sugar together until thick like apple butter.

  2. Add cinnamon, cloves, and salt to taste.

  3. Stir in the vinegar.

Strain and bottle

  1. Strain the mixture through a fine sieve.

  2. Bottle 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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Clove + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,386 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Cinnamon + vinegartop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

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

Gooseberries
Provide the fruit base, tartness, and natural pectin that helps the ketchup thicken.
Sugar
Sweetens the ketchup and helps it thicken and set as the mixture cooks down.
Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that balances the sweetness and helps preserve the ketchup.
Cinnamon
Adds warm aroma and spice flavor.
Cloves
Adds warm, pungent aroma and spice flavor.

The step that matters

Boil until thick like apple butter. As water evaporates, the sugar and the gooseberries' pectin thicken the mixture. Stopping too early leaves it runny, while cooking too long or at too high heat can scorch the sugar and fruit on the bottom of the pan.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Allspicefits about as well
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Clovethe original
  4. Cardamomfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cinnamon, 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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