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Tomato Catsup

A homemade tomato ketchup made by simmering tomatoes with salt, pepper, mustard, cloves, vinegar, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Tomato Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the ripe tomatoes and place them in a large pot.

  2. Add salt, pepper, ground mustard, cloves, cider vinegar, and sugar.

Cook

  1. Boil slowly for 3 minutes.

  2. Add the spices near the end of cooking to prevent burning.

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. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

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

  3. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  4. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Mustard + clovetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,829 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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 and body of the ketchup as they cook down.
Cider vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that balances sweetness and gives the ketchup its tang.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that rounds out the vinegar's sharpness.
Ground mustard
Contributes pungent, savoury aroma and a mild heat.
Cloves
Contribute a warm, aromatic flavour that defines the spiced character.

The step that matters

Add the spices near the end of cooking. Ground spices like mustard and cloves can scorch and turn bitter under long heat. Adding them late keeps their aroma fresh and their flavour clean.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, mustard, clove, cider, vinegar, sugar):

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, mustard, clove, cider, vinegar, 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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