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Sauce

Tomato Catsup

A sauce made from tomatoes, salt, cloves, allspice, cayenne pepper, black pepper, and nutmeg, boiled and bottled.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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 ↓

Tomato Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Add the ripe tomatoes and coarse sea salt to a large pot.

  2. Strain the mixture and boil it down to half its volume.

  3. Fifteen minutes before removing from heat, add the cloves, allspice, cayenne pepper, black pepper, and grated nutmegs.

  4. Bottle the catsup when it has cooled.

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. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Allspice + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Ripe tomatoes
Form the bulk of the sauce, providing the body and flavour that the reduction concentrates.
Cloves
Add warm, aromatic spice notes to the sauce.
Allspice
Adds a warm, aromatic spice flavour to the sauce.
Cayenne pepper
Adds heat to the sauce.
Black pepper
Adds sharp, pungent spice to the sauce.
Grated nutmegs
Add warm, sweet aromatic notes to the sauce.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

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