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Sauce

Cold Catsup

A cold tomato condiment with horseradish, mustard, celery, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Horseradish and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,832 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Cold Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the tomatoes and horseradish finely.

Mix and store

  1. In a large bowl, combine all ingredients: tomatoes, horseradish, salt, mustard seeds, black pepper, red pepper, celery, nasturtiums, onions, cloves, cinnamon, mace, sugar, and vinegar. Mix thoroughly until well combined.

  2. Transfer the mixture to bottles for storage.

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. Horseradish + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Mustard + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Tomato + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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 and liquid base of the ketchup.
Horseradish
Adds sharp pungency that cuts through the sweetness and richness.
White mustard seed
Contributes a sharp, pungent bite and body to the sauce.
Black mustard seed
Adds a stronger, more pungent heat as the seeds stay in the sauce.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that sharpens flavour and helps preserve the sauce.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, horseradish, mustard, pepper, celery, clove, cinnamon):

  1. Lettucefits better
  2. Broccolifits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, horseradish, mustard, pepper, celery, 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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