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Sauce

Tomato Catsup

A tomato-based sauce made by boiling tomatoes, adding shallots, pepper or cayenne, ginger, salt, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Shallot and ginger work together. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 565 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Tomato Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil the tomatoes until soft.

  2. Rub the tomatoes through a sieve.

Season and reduce

  1. Add shallots, red pepper or cayenne, ginger, and salt to the tomatoes.

  2. Boil the mixture until it reduces by one-third.

  3. Ten minutes before removing from heat, stir in the vinegar.

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. Shallot + gingertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together565 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Pepper + gingertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,800 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Tomato + gingertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,887 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Shallot + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,898 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes
Provide the main body and pulp, which thickens as the liquid reduces.
Shallots
Add savoury depth and aromatic flavour to the sauce.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and helps preserve the ketchup.
Red pepper or cayenne pepper
Adds heat and pungency to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Reducing the mixture by one-third. Boiling concentrates the sugars and solids and thickens the sauce. Stopping too early leaves it thin, while overcooking can scorch it, so watch the volume as it reduces.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (shallot, pepper, ginger, vinegar):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against shallot, pepper, ginger, 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.

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