Skip to main content
Main

Tomato Catsup

A thick tomato sauce made by boiling tomatoes, sieving, seasoning, and reducing with vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Tomato and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,923 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Tomato Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Cut the tomatoes.

  2. Boil the tomatoes until soft.

  3. Pass the boiled tomatoes through a flour sieve.

Season and reduce

  1. Add salt, black pepper, red pepper, and ground mustard to the tomato puree.

  2. Cook the mixture in vinegar for three hours until it reduces to one quart of catsup.

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

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

  2. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  4. Tomato + mustardtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,482 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes
Form the bulk of the sauce and provide its body, flavor, and natural acidity.
Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity and helps preserve the sauce during long cooking.
Salt
Enhances the overall flavor of the tomato base.
Ground mustard
Adds a sharp, pungent note that balances the tomato's sweetness.

The step that matters

Reducing the mixture over three hours. Cooking slowly for a long time evaporates water and concentrates the tomato flavor and thickness. Stopping too early leaves a thin sauce, while overcooking can scorch the sugars and make it bitter.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Radishfits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, mustard, 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.

More tomato ketchup recipes

Green 26 See all 523 →

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesCream of Tomato SoupCream of Tomato Soup107 recipesTomato BisqueTomato Bisque61 recipesCream Tomato SoupCream Tomato Soup28 recipes