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Tomato Catchup Vfith Vinegar

A preserved tomato condiment made with vinegar, sugar, spices, and mustard seed.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Tomato Catchup Vfith Vinegar

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the tomatoes into quarters and place them in a porcelain kettle.

  2. Add the cider vinegar, sugar, mustard seed, black pepper, salt, mace, cloves, and allspice.

Cook and bottle

  1. Boil the mixture for one hour.

  2. Strain the mixture through a colander.

  3. Bottle the catchup when cold and cork it tightly.

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Cider + vinegartop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,431 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

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

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

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

  5. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Ripe tomatoes
Provide the main body and flavor base of the ketchup.
Cider vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the ketchup its tang and helps preserve it.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the acidity of the vinegar and tomatoes.
Mustard seed
Contributes a sharp, aromatic pungency to the sauce.

The step that matters

Boil the mixture for one hour. A long, steady boil reduces the water in the tomatoes and concentrates the flavor, while the vinegar and sugar mellow together. Too short a boil leaves the sauce thin and watery.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, cider, vinegar, sugar, mustard, pepper, clove):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, cider, vinegar, sugar, mustard, pepper, 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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