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Sauce

Grape Catsup

A sweet and spicy grape-based sauce made by stewing grapes, adding spices, sugar, vinegar, and boiling until thick.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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 ↓

Grape Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Stew the grapes until soft.

  2. Strain the mixture.

Make the ketchup

  1. Add sugar, cloves, cinnamon, allspice, pepper, salt, and vinegar.

  2. Boil until thick.

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Allspice + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Grapes
Provide the main fruit body and flavour once stewed and strained into a pulp.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and, as it dissolves and thickens with boiling, body to the ketchup.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and helps preserve the finished ketchup.
Cloves
Contribute warm, aromatic spice flavour.
Cinnamon
Contributes warm, sweet aroma and spice flavour.
Allspice
Adds a warm, aromatic spice flavour that blends clove and cinnamon notes.

The step that matters

Boil until thick. Long boiling evaporates water so the pulp concentrates and thickens. Stop too early and the ketchup stays thin; boil too long and sugars can darken and scorch on the bottom of the pan.

Swap the grape

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

  1. Limefits better
  2. Orangefits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Grapethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, clove, cinnamon, allspice, pepper, 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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