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Tomato Catsup

A preserved tomato sauce made by boiling tomatoes with vinegar, salt, spices, onions, and garlic.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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. Boil the tomatoes until soft.

  2. Pass the tomatoes through a fine wire sieve.

Season and reduce

  1. Add vinegar, salt, cloves, allspice, cayenne pepper, black pepper, boiled onions, and skinned garlic to the tomatoes, then mix all ingredients together.

  2. Boil the mixture for about 3 hours or until reduced by half.

  3. Bottle the catsup without straining.

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

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  3. Tomato + garlictop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,076 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Allspice + peppertop 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

Tomatoes
Form the bulk and body of the sauce, providing the main flavor base.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavor and balances the sweetness of the cooked vegetables.
Onions
Add savory depth and natural sweetness as they cook down into the sauce.
Garlic
Contributes a pungent aroma that mellows during long cooking.
Cayenne pepper
Adds a sharp background heat to the sauce.

The step that matters

Reducing the mixture by half. Long simmering evaporates water, thickening the sauce and concentrating its flavor. Stopping too early leaves it thin and watery, while boiling too hard or too long can scorch the bottom and darken the taste.

Swap the tomato

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

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

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