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Tomato Catsup. No. 1

A homemade tomato ketchup made with tomatoes, onion, spices, sugar, mustard, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove 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 ↓

Tomato Catsup. No. 1

Ingredients

Directions

Make the ketchup base

  1. Combine tomato pulp and chopped onion in a pot.

  2. Add salt and brown sugar.

  3. Boil until thick.

  4. Strain through a sieve, working it until only seeds remain.

Season and bottle

  1. Return to the stove.

  2. Add mustard, allspice, black pepper, cinnamon, ground cloves, cayenne pepper, nutmeg, and vinegar.

  3. Boil until it can just run from the mouth of a bottle.

  4. Seal in large-mouthed bottles while hot for long-term storage.

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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Allspice + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Mustard + allspicetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,928 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Pepper + clovetop 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

Tomato pulp
Forms the bulk of the sauce and provides its main body and flavour once reduced.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and helps preserve the sauce.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the acidity and spices.
Salt
Seasons the sauce and draws moisture out to help it thicken.
Onion
Adds savoury depth and aromatic background flavour as it cooks down.

The step that matters

Boil until it can just run from the mouth of a bottle. Tomato sauce thickens as water evaporates and as it cools, so boiling too long makes it pasty, while stopping too early leaves it thin and prone to spoiling in storage.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Horseradishfits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

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