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Tomato Catsup

A thick tomato sauce made with tomatoes, onions, spices, and vinegar, simmered until thick.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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

Make the tomato base

  1. In a large pot, combine the skinned tomatoes, peach leaves, chopped onions, and whole cloves.

  2. Boil until the tomatoes are well cooked, then rub the mixture through a fine sieve to remove seeds.

  3. Return the strained mixture to the pot and boil down until thick, stirring constantly to prevent burning.

Season and finish

  1. Add the cider vinegar, ground allspice, grated nutmeg, brown sugar, coarse sea salt, ground mustard, black pepper, cinnamon, and cayenne pepper.

  2. Boil for an additional 30 minutes after adding the spices.

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. Cider + vinegartop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,431 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

What each ingredient does

Ripe tomatoes
Provide the bulk of the ketchup and its base flavour and body when cooked down.
Onions
Add savoury depth and body to the cooked tomato mixture.
Cider vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the ketchup its tang and helps preserve it.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the acidity and vinegar's sharpness.
Cloves
Contribute warm, aromatic spice notes to the sauce.
Ground mustard
Adds pungent sharpness that rounds out the spiced flavour.

The step that matters

Stirring while boiling down the strained mixture. Thickening concentrates sugars and solids in a thin pot, so the mixture scorches easily on the bottom. Constant stirring prevents burning and keeps the flavour clean.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, peach, clove, cider, vinegar, allspice, nutmeg):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Cucumberfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, peach, clove, cider, vinegar, allspice, 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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