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Tomato Catsup

A preserved tomato sauce made with tomatoes, horseradish, onion, spices, vinegar, and mustard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Tomato Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Wash and slice the tomatoes.

  2. Boil or stew the tomatoes with a little salt until soft.

  3. Strain the mixture through a fine sieve, pressing out as much pulp as possible.

Make the ketchup

  1. Add horseradish, onion studded with cloves, allspice, red pepper, and salt to taste.

  2. Boil the mixture until it thickens and looks rich.

  3. Once thickened, stir in vinegar and mustard.

Bottle and store

  1. Let the catsup cool before bottling.

  2. Ensure the mixture is free of onion and horseradish before bottling.

  3. Seal the bottles tightly and store 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.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Allspice + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,928 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Horseradish + allspicetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together654 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Clove + peppertop 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

Tomatoes
Provide the main body, pulp and flavour of the ketchup.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and helps preserve the ketchup.
Onion
Adds savoury depth and aroma to the cooked mixture.
Prepared mustard
Adds sharpness and a tangy flavour that rounds out the sauce.

The step that matters

Boil the mixture until it thickens. Tomato sauce needs sustained cooking to evaporate water and concentrate flavour and body. Stopping early leaves it thin and watery, and it may spoil sooner in storage.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (horseradish, onion, clove, allspice, pepper, vinegar, mustard):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Radishfits better
  3. Broccolifits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against horseradish, onion, clove, allspice, pepper, vinegar, mustard. 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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