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Sauce

Cold Tomato Catsup

A cold tomato condiment made with tomatoes, peppers, mustard seeds, spices, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and celery are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,169 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Cold Tomato Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Pare and chop the tomatoes.

  2. Drain the chopped tomatoes overnight.

Make the ketchup

  1. Add the green peppers, red pepper, salt, mustard seeds, black pepper, cloves, celery seed, and vinegar to the drained tomatoes. Mix well and bottle 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. Mustard + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  5. Clove + celerytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

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, bulk and flavour of the ketchup.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the ketchup its tang and helps keep it stable.
Black mustard seed
Adds sharp, pungent flavour and a slight bite to the sauce.
White mustard seed
Contributes mild, earthy pungency to the seasoning blend.
Green peppers
Add vegetable flavour and a slightly bitter, fresh note.

Swap the tomato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, mustard, clove, celery, 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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