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Tomato Catsup

A preserved tomato sauce made with vinegar, salt, spices, garlic, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice 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

  1. Boil the tomatoes until soft enough to rub through a sieve.

  2. Add vinegar, salt, cloves, allspice, cayenne pepper, garlic, and sugar to the liquid.

  3. Boil slowly until reduced by half, about one day.

  4. Set aside for a week, then boil again.

  5. If too thick, thin with vinegar.

  6. Bottle and seal.

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. Clove + allspicetop 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. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Allspice + peppertop 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 of the liquid and pulp that is reduced into the ketchup body.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens flavour and helps preserve the finished ketchup.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the acidity and tomato tang.
Salt
Seasons the ketchup and helps draw out and balance the flavours.
Garlic
Adds pungent aroma and savoury depth to the sauce.

The step that matters

Boil slowly until reduced by half. Long, gentle reduction concentrates the tomato pulp and thickens it while driving off excess water. Boiling too hard can scorch the sugar and tomato solids on the bottom of the pan, giving a burnt taste, so the heat needs to stay low and the pot stirred.

Swap the tomato

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

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

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