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Tomato Catsup

A thick tomato sauce seasoned with spices, vinegar, and sugar, boiled and bottled.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 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 ↓

Tomato Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the juice

  1. Boil ripe tomatoes for 1 hour, then strain through a sieve.

Season and cook

  1. To 1 quart of juice, add cinnamon, black pepper, cayenne, ground mustard, and coarse sea salt, then boil for 3 hours.

  2. Add 1 pint of cider vinegar to each quart of juice and boil for 30 minutes longer.

Bottle

  1. Bottle while hot.

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

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Cinnamon + horseradishtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together515 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  5. Horseradish + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,784 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes
Provide the main body and liquid base that the ketchup reduces into a thick sauce.
Cider vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that balances the sweetness and helps preserve the finished ketchup.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness that rounds out the acidity and spice.
Ground mustard
Adds a sharp, pungent aroma and flavour that deepens the spice blend.

The step that matters

Adding the vinegar and simmering 30 minutes. Vinegar is acidic, so adding it after the long reduction and boiling it briefly balances flavour and helps preserve the ketchup. Boiling too briefly leaves the sauce sharp and less stable.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cinnamon, pepper, mustard, cider, vinegar, horseradish, onion):

  1. Broccolifits better
  2. Radishfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cinnamon, pepper, mustard, cider, vinegar, horseradish, onion. 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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