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Sauce

Tomato Catsup

A sweet and tangy tomato sauce made with tomatoes, vinegar, sugar, salt, spices, onions, and red pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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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

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderately quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Boil the tomatoes until soft.

  2. Let them stand overnight, then strain through a sieve.

Make the ketchup

  1. Add vinegar, sugar, coarse sea salt, and ground spices.

  2. Add ground onions and red pepper to taste.

  3. Boil the mixture down by half.

  4. Tie the spices in a bag and add to the mixture while boiling.

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 + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Allspice + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  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 of the ketchup and, once reduced, give it body and colour.
Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that balances the sweetness.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that rounds out the vinegar's sharpness.
Onions
Ground onions add savoury depth and some body to the sauce.

The step that matters

Boiling the mixture down by half. Reducing concentrates the flavours and thickens the sauce. Sugar-rich mixtures can scorch on the bottom of the pan, so stir often and keep the heat controlled.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, vinegar, sugar, clove, allspice, cinnamon, pepper. 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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