Skip to main content
Drink

Currant Catsup

A sweet and tart currant sauce made with sugar, vinegar, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Currant Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine currants, sugar, vinegar, cloves, cinnamon, pepper, and allspice in a porcelain saucepan.

  2. Boil until thoroughly cooked.

  3. Strain through a sieve, discarding the skins.

  4. Boil down until thick enough to run freely from a bottle when cold.

  5. Cork and set aside.

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 + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Currants
Provide the main fruit body and pectin-rich pulp that thickens the ketchup as it reduces.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and, as it concentrates, helps give the ketchup body and preserving strength.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that balances the sweetness and helps keep the ketchup stable.
Cinnamon
Contributes warm aromatic flavor to the ketchup.
Cloves
Contributes strong aromatic flavor to the ketchup.

The step that matters

Boil down until thick enough to run freely from a bottle when cold. The ketchup thickens mainly as water evaporates and sugar and pectin concentrate during reduction. Stopping too early leaves it thin and prone to spoiling, while over-reducing makes it stiff and sticky once cold.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Limefits better
  2. Orangefits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Currantthe original

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

You might also like

Raspberry VinegarRaspberry Vinegar214 recipesSugar VinegarSugar Vinegar20 recipesBlack Currant CordialBlack Currant Cordial11 recipesCinnamon TinctureCinnamon Tincture10 recipes