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Cold Catsup

A cold tomato-based sauce made with tomatoes, onions, celery, peppers, horseradish, spices, sugar, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and horseradish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,832 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Cold Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Chop the ripe tomatoes and the onions.

  2. Sprinkle the tomatoes and onions with salt and let them stand for 2 hours.

  3. Finely chop the celery, the red peppers, and the nasturtium seeds.

  4. Grate the horseradish.

Combine and jar

  1. Drain the tomatoes and onions.

  2. Mix the chopped vegetables with the salt, spices, sugar, and vinegar.

  3. Mix the drained tomatoes and onions thoroughly with the other ingredients.

  4. Seal the mixture in jars.

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. Mustard + horseradishtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Celery + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Tomato + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

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

  4. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  5. Mustard + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

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 and flavour of the ketchup.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the tomatoes and onions, concentrating flavour and firming the vegetables.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and helps preserve the mixture.
Sugar
Balances the acidity and vinegar with sweetness.
White mustard seed
Adds pungent, sharp flavour that deepens the spice profile.
Horseradish
Contributes sharp heat and pungency that fades slightly when cooked.

The step that matters

Draining the salted tomatoes and onions. Salt pulls liquid out of the vegetables during standing. Draining well before mixing keeps the ketchup thick, so excess water is removed rather than diluting the sauce and its flavour.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, celery, mustard, pepper, horseradish, cinnamon, sugar):

  1. Lettucefits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Broccolifits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, celery, mustard, pepper, horseradish, cinnamon, sugar. 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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