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Red Pepper Catchup

A fermented pepper condiment made by boiling peppers, vinegar, water, horseradish, onions, and garlic, then straining and bottling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Red Pepper Catchup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil the peppers, vinegar, water, horseradish, onions, and garlic until the onions are soft.

  2. Strain the mixture.

  3. Let it cool, then bottle it.

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. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Horseradish + garlictop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together719 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Horseradish + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,784 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Pepper + garlictop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,090 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Pepper + horseradishtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,646 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

Peppers
Form the bulk of the sauce and soften into a thick, smooth body.
Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that gives the ketchup its tang.
Onions
Soften and turn mildly sweet as they cook, adding body to the sauce.
Horseradish
Adds sharp pungency that mellows somewhat during boiling.
Garlic
Adds pungent aroma and savory depth.

The step that matters

Boil until the onions are soft. Onions that are not fully softened keep a raw, sharp flavor and a gritty texture. Cooking them thoroughly lets their sugars mellow and lets the mixture blend smoothly when strained.

Swap the horseradish

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

  1. Broccolifits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Horseradishthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, vinegar, onion, garlic. 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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