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Pontac Catsup for Fish

A fermented elderberry catsup seasoned with vinegar, spices, and ginger, intended for fish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,038 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Pontac Catsup for Fish

Oven, in the book's wordsA cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the infusion

  1. Pour boiling vinegar over elderberries and let it stand in a cool oven overnight.

  2. Strain the liquid without pressure the next day.

Spice and bottle

  1. Boil the strained liquid for five minutes with salt, ginger, mace, peppercorns, cloves, and shallots.

  2. Bottle the catsup with the spices when it is completely cool.

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. Ginger + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Clove + shallottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,677 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Ginger + shallottop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together565 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Ginger + macetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,152 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

What each ingredient does

Elderberries
Provide the main fruity flavour and colour of the catsup.
Boiling vinegar
Extracts flavour from the berries and acts as the preserving acid.
Shallots
Add savoury depth and a mild onion-like aroma as the liquid boils.

The step that matters

Strain without pressure. Pressing the berries forces through solids and cloudy pulp, which makes the catsup murky and can add bitter, harsh notes. Letting the liquid drip keeps it clear and smooth.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vinegar, ginger, clove, shallot):

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Turmericfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, ginger, clove, shallot. 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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