Skip to main content
Sauce

Eoiled Tomato Catsup

A spicy tomato sauce made by boiling tomatoes and adding spices, sugar, vinegar, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Eoiled Tomato Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pulp

  1. Boil the tomatoes until soft, then strain through a sieve.

  2. Put the tomato pulp in a kettle and boil until very thick.

Season and finish

  1. Once thickened, add black pepper, ground cloves, allspice, mustard, nutmeg, coarse sea salt, sugar, vinegar, and cayenne pepper.

  2. Stir well and continue to boil for a few more minutes.

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. Allspice + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,331 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 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

Tomatoes
Form the main body and bulk of the ketchup once cooked down and strained.
Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that balances the sweetness and rich tomato flavor.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that rounds out the acidity and spice.

The step that matters

Boiling the pulp until very thick. Long boiling evaporates water and concentrates the tomato's flavor and body. If it is not reduced enough, the ketchup stays thin and watery, and the added vinegar and sugar will taste more dominant.

Swap the tomato

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

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

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

More tomato ketchup recipes

Green 26 See all 523 →

You might also like

Mixed MustardMixed Mustard9 recipesWine Sauce (for stewed fruit)Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)186 recipesCaper SauceCaper Sauce180 recipesBrown SauceBrown Sauce141 recipes