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Gooseberry Catsup

Gooseberry catsup is a sweet and spicy preserve made by boiling gooseberries with vinegar, sugar, pepper, allspice, and cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,536 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Gooseberry Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil the gooseberries in vinegar until reduced to a pulp.

  2. Add sugar, black pepper, allspice, and cinnamon.

  3. Seal the mixture hot in jars.

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Pepper + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,890 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  4. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Vinegar + allspicetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,548 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Gooseberries
Provide the main fruit body and pectin, breaking down into a thick pulp as they cook.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and body, and helps preserve the ketchup by binding water.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens flavour and helps preserve the ketchup.
Ground black pepper
Adds sharp, warm heat that balances the sweetness of the fruit and sugar.
Allspice
Contributes warm, aromatic spice notes that give the ketchup its depth.
Cinnamon
Contributes sweet, woody aroma that rounds out the spice blend.

The step that matters

Reducing the gooseberries to a pulp. Boiling in vinegar must go long enough for the fruit to break down fully, because pectin and fibre need prolonged heat to soften into a smooth, thick body. Undercooked fruit leaves a watery or lumpy ketchup.

Swap the allspice

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, vinegar, pepper, cinnamon):

  1. Allspicethe original
  2. Clovefits about as well
  3. Nutmegfits about as well
  4. Cardamomfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, vinegar, pepper, 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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