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Sauce

Tomato Catsup

A preserved tomato sauce made by boiling tomatoes with vinegar and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice 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

Make the sauce

  1. Boil the cut tomatoes for a little while, then pass them through a fine wire sieve.

  2. Boil the strained tomatoes for four hours, stirring frequently.

  3. Just before removing from heat, add the cider vinegar, salt, black pepper, ground cloves, and ground allspice.

  4. Allow the mixture to come to a boil, then remove from heat while hot.

Bottle

  1. Bottle and cork the catsup well.

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Cider + vinegartop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,431 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

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

Ripe tomatoes
Provide the main body, flavor, and bulk of the sauce as they cook down.
Cider vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the ketchup its sharp tang and helps preserve it.
Ground cloves
Contribute warm, aromatic spice notes to the sauce.
Ground allspice
Contributes warm, aromatic spice notes that round out the sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the vinegar and spices just before removing from heat. Vinegar is volatile and its sharp aroma fades with prolonged heating, while ground spices lose aromatic compounds over long cooking. Adding them late keeps the tang and spice fresh.

Swap the tomato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cider, vinegar, pepper, clove, allspice. 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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