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Tomato Catsup

A preserved tomato sauce made by boiling tomatoes, reducing with vinegar, sugar, salt, spices, and alcohol.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and clove 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 gently for 30 minutes.

  2. Press the tomatoes through a colander to remove skins and cores.

  3. Return the liquid to a porcelain-lined kettle and boil it down by half.

Make the ketchup

  1. Add vinegar, sugar, salt, and spices, then boil the mixture down by two-thirds.

  2. For a lighter color, boil down to two-thirds after adding vinegar, then sugar, salt, and spices, bringing it to a boil before removing from heat.

  3. Optionally, add two small heads of garlic or a small chopped onion with the spices.

Bottle and seal

  1. Bottle the catsup when perfectly cold.

  2. Pour a little alcohol into the top of each bottle.

  3. Cork and seal the bottles.

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. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Ginger + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Allspice + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,620 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Allspice + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,928 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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 and flavor, which is concentrated as the liquid reduces.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the ketchup its tang and helps preserve it.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the acidity and salt.
Salt
Seasons the sauce and helps preserve it.
Black pepper
Adds sharp, pungent heat as a seasoning.
Cayenne
Adds lingering heat that sharpens the overall flavor.

The step that matters

Boiling the mixture down. Reducing the tomato mixture concentrates its flavor and thickens it, and the amount of reduction controls both the final color and consistency. Stopping too early leaves the sauce thin, while boiling too long darkens it.

Swap the tomato

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

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

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