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Tomato Catsup

A preserved tomato sauce made with tomatoes, vinegar, spices, and salt, boiled and bottled.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Tomato Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Wash the tomatoes and place them in a pan.

  2. Scald and skin the tomatoes, then cook until soft.

  3. Strain the tomatoes through a fine wire sieve.

Make the ketchup

  1. Add vinegar, Cayenne pepper, black pepper, coarse sea salt, garlic, allspice, and cloves.

  2. Tie each spice in a separate cheesecloth bag.

  3. Boil for three hours, stirring constantly to prevent scorching.

Bottle and seal

  1. Remove the spice bags, bottle the catsup, cork tightly, and seal with wax.

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Tomato + garlictop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,076 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes
Provide the bulk and body of the ketchup as they cook down into a thick pulp.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavor and helps preserve the ketchup.
Garlic
Adds pungent aroma and savory depth to the tomato base.
Cloves
Adds strong warm aroma that balances the sweetness of the tomatoes.
Allspice
Contributes warm aromatic flavor to the sauce.
Black pepper
Adds mild heat and aroma to the sauce.

The step that matters

Boil for three hours, stirring constantly. The thickening tomato mixture scorches easily on the pan base, and scorched sugars and proteins leave a burnt taste. Constant stirring keeps the heat even while the sauce reduces and thickens.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, pepper, garlic, allspice, 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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