Name: Tomata Ketchup
Ingredients: tomatoes; coarse sea salt; grated horseradish; garlic; mace; cloves

Why it works: Tomato and garlic are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,076 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Tomata Ketchup

Ingredients

Directions

Slice the tomatoes and layer them in a deep earthen pan, sprinkling each layer with coarse sea salt.
Let the tomatoes sit for 12 hours.
Place them in a preserving kettle over heat and simmer until soft.
Pour the mixture into a thin linen bag and squeeze out the juice.
Season the juice with grated horseradish, minced garlic, mace, and cloves.
Boil the mixture well with the seasonings, then let it cool.
Bottle the ketchup for use.

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.

Tomato + garlictop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together14,076 recipes

Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).
Horseradish + garlictop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together719 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together8,400 recipes

Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).
Horseradish + clovetop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,245 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Garlic + clovetop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together11,368 recipes

Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, horseradish, garlic, clove):

Cuminfits better
Oreganofits better
Thymefits better
Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, horseradish, garlic, clove. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.