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Cold Catsup

A chilled tomato-based condiment made with tomatoes, onions, celery, peppers, mustard, spices, sugar, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and horseradish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,832 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Cold Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop ripe tomatoes and onions, sprinkle with salt, and let stand for 2 hours.

  2. Finely chop celery, red peppers, and nasturtium seeds, and grate the horseradish.

Combine and jar

  1. Mix chopped vegetables with salt, spices, sugar, and vinegar.

  2. Drain tomatoes and onions, mix thoroughly with other ingredients, and seal in jars.

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. Mustard + horseradishtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Celery + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Tomato + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Mustard + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 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

Tomatoes
Provides the bulk and main body of the ketchup.
White onions
Adds savory depth and a sharp background flavor.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives tang and helps preserve the ketchup.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar.
Celery
Adds crisp texture and a vegetal, savory note.

The step that matters

Drain tomatoes and onions. Salting draws water out of the tomatoes and onions. Draining them before mixing keeps the ketchup thick rather than watery, and prevents it from becoming overly salty.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, celery, mustard, pepper, horseradish, cinnamon, sugar):

  1. Lettucefits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Broccolifits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, celery, mustard, pepper, horseradish, cinnamon, sugar. 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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