Name: Tomato Catsup, No. 1
Ingredients: Tomatoes; Coarse sea salt; Sugar; Vinegar; Spices (such as cloves, allspice, and cinnamon)

Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Tomato Catsup, No. 1

Ingredients

Directions

Wash and chop the tomatoes.
Place the chopped tomatoes in a pot and add coarse sea salt.
Simmer the mixture until it thickens, stirring occasionally.
Add sugar, vinegar, and spices to taste.
Continue to cook until the desired consistency is reached.
Strain the mixture through a fine sieve to remove solids.
Bottle the catsup and seal tightly.

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.

Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,189 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).
Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together7,874 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Allspice + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,536 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together30,779 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Tomato + cinnamontop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,348 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

Swap the tomato

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

Mustardfits better
Horseradishfits better
Capsicumfits better
Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, vinegar, clove, allspice, cinnamon. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.