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Sauce

Cold Catsup

A cold tomato sauce made with tomatoes, celery, onions, peppers, vinegar, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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 ↓

Cold Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Sprinkle tomatoes with salt and drain for 2 hours.

Combine and serve

  1. Combine all ingredients in a jar.

  2. It is ready to use without cooking.

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. Celery + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Ripe tomatoes
Provide the bulk of the sauce and its fresh, juicy body.
Good vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens flavor and helps preserve the uncooked sauce.
Celery
Adds savory, vegetal flavor and crisp texture to the sauce.
Onions
Contribute pungent, savory depth as the chopped base.
Mustard seed
Adds sharp, pungent heat and aroma that develops as the seeds soak in the liquid.

The step that matters

Salting and draining the tomatoes. Salt draws water out of the tomatoes by osmosis. Skipping or shortening the two-hour drain leaves excess liquid that dilutes the sauce and weakens its flavor and texture.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Lettucefits better
  3. Horseradishfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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