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Sauce

Cold Catsup

A tomato-based sauce with horseradish, onions, mustard seeds, spices, sugar, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Horseradish and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,832 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Cold Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Peel and chop the tomatoes finely.

  2. Grate the horseradish and chop the onions.

  3. Mix the tomatoes, horseradish, onions, and salt together.

Add the seasonings and jar

  1. Braise the black and white mustard seeds in a mortar.

  2. Add the mustard seeds and spices to the tomato mixture. Mix thoroughly and transfer to 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. Horseradish + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

  5. Horseradish + cinnamontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together515 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes
Provide the main body and liquid base of the ketchup.
Horseradish
Adds a sharp, pungent bite that balances the sweetness.
Onions
Add savoury depth and aromatic flavour to the base.
Mustard seeds
Contribute a sharp, pungent flavour when braised and mixed in.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens flavour and helps preserve the ketchup.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that rounds out the sharp and acidic notes.

The step that matters

Braise the mustard seeds. Mustard seeds release their pungent flavour only when crushed or heated, and they stay harsh if left whole and raw. Braising them in a mortar helps release that flavour before they are mixed into the tomato base.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, horseradish, onion, mustard, 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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