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Tomato Catsup

A preserved tomato sauce made by cooking tomatoes with spices and vinegar.

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

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Pour boiling water over the tomatoes.

  2. Remove skins and bad spots.

Cook the ketchup

  1. Boil the tomatoes slowly in a porcelain kettle for about 3 hours, stirring often.

  2. Add salt, pepper, ground mustard, chopped red peppers, cloves, and allspice.

  3. Stir the spices into the cider vinegar. Mix thoroughly.

  4. Simmer the mixture for half an hour.

Bottle

  1. Bottle the mixture while hot. Seal the bottle.

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. Mustard + allspicetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,928 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

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, moisture and tomato flavour of the ketchup.
Cider vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the ketchup its tang and helps preserve it.
Salt
Seasons the ketchup and draws out moisture during long simmering.
Red peppers
Add sweetness, body and vegetable flavour to the sauce.
Ground mustard
Contributes pungency and a sharp background flavour to the sauce.

The step that matters

Boil the tomatoes slowly for about 3 hours, stirring often. Slow cooking lets water evaporate so the sauce thickens and concentrates its flavour. Stirring often prevents scorching on the bottom of the kettle, since sugars and solids burn easily at the base of a pot.

Swap the tomato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, mustard, clove, allspice, cider, vinegar. 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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