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Tomato Ketchup

A fermented tomato condiment made with tomatoes, vinegar, spices, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Tomato Ketchup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Skin the tomatoes and squeeze them through a sieve until very dry.

Cook the ketchup

  1. In a pot, combine the tomato pulp and juice with the vinegar.

  2. Boil over low heat until it begins to thicken.

  3. Add the ground cloves, allspice, cinnamon, pepper, and powdered nutmegs.

  4. Continue boiling until it reaches the consistency of thin mush.

  5. Stir in the coarse sea salt.

Bottle

  1. Pour the ketchup into bottles, cork, and seal once cooled.

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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Allspice + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Allspice + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,331 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

Tomatoes
Provide the main body, sweetness and flavour of the ketchup once reduced.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and helps preserve the ketchup.
Ground cloves
Contribute warm, aromatic spice notes to the sauce.
Ground allspice
Adds warm, aromatic spice notes to the sauce.
Ground cinnamon
Adds sweet, warm aromatic notes to the sauce.
Ground black pepper
Adds sharp, aromatic heat to the sauce.

The step that matters

Reduce until thin mush. Boiling drives off water so the tomato pulp thickens and concentrates. Stopping too early leaves the ketchup thin and watery, while over-boiling makes it pasty and dense.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

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