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Cold Tomato Catsup

A cold tomato catsup made with tomatoes, horseradish, mustard seeds, spices, and cider vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Horseradish and mustard 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 Tomato Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Drain the chopped tomatoes in a colander.

Combine and bottle

  1. In an earthen vessel, combine the tomatoes with horseradish, salt, mustard seeds, black pepper, red peppers, celery, celery seed, nasturtiums, brown sugar, cloves, allspice, cinnamon, mace, and cider vinegar, and mix all ingredients well.

  2. Bottle and seal the mixture.

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. Horseradish + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Mustard + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Mustard + allspicetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,928 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes
Form the bulk of the sauce and provide its main body and flavour.
Cider vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the catsup its tang and helps preserve it.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the acidity and the sharp spices.
Mustard seeds
Contribute pungency and a slight texture when left whole in the sauce.
Horseradish
Adds sharp heat that mellows over time in the sauce.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Turnipfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Beetrootfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

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