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Catsups and Sauces

A fruit-based catsup made from fruit pulp, sugar, spices, and vinegar, boiled and bottled.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove 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 ↓

Catsups and Sauces

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Select perfect fruit.

  2. Cook the fruit in a porcelain pot.

Fill the bottles

  1. Fill bottles with catsup and leave space at the top of the bottles.

  2. Fill the bottles with hot vinegar.

  3. If mold appears, carefully remove it.

Make the catsup

  1. Sprinkle the pulp with salt.

  2. Let the pulp stand overnight.

  3. Strain the pulp.

  4. Add sugar and spices to the pulp.

  5. Boil the mixture down by one third.

  6. Skim out the spices.

  7. Boil until thick.

  8. Adjust consistency with vinegar.

Bottle

  1. Bottle the catsup for use.

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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Peach + cinnamontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together625 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  3. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Peach + clovetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together280 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  5. Mace + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

What each ingredient does

Fruit pulp
Provides the main body, flavor and moisture of the catsup.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the cooked mixture thicken as water evaporates.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavor and helps keep the catsup stable.

The step that matters

Boil the mixture down by one third. Evaporating water concentrates the sugar and pulp, thickening the catsup. Boiling too briefly leaves it thin and watery, while boiling too long at high heat can scorch the sugar and darken the flavor.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Cardamomfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against peach, sugar, cinnamon, clove, 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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