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Bottled Tomatas, or Tomata Catsup

A preserved tomato sauce made by boiling tomatoes, capsicums, and shallots with salt, then bottling the hot mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and capsicum match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,520 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Bottled Tomatas, or Tomata Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Cut the tomatoes into quarters and place them on dishes.

  2. Sprinkle the salt over the tomatoes and let them sit overnight.

  3. The next day, drain the juice through a fine sieve into a saucepan.

Cook the ketchup

  1. Boil the juice for 30 minutes with the capsicums and shallots.

  2. Add the pulped tomatoes to the mixture and boil for an additional 30 minutes.

Bottle and seal

  1. Prepare clean bottles by warming them near the fire.

  2. Fill the warm bottles with the hot catsup, cork them, and seal with rosin immediately.

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. Tomato + capsicumtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,520 recipes

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

  2. Capsicum + shallottop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,984 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Tomato + shallottop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together583 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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, pulp and flavour of the ketchup.
Coarse sea salt
Draws juice out of the tomatoes overnight, which is then drained off for cooking.
Capsicums
Add vegetable flavour and body to the juice during the long boil.
Shallots
Add savoury, aromatic flavour to the cooking liquid.

The step that matters

Boil the juice before adding the pulped tomatoes. Boiling the drained juice with the capsicums and shallots concentrates its flavour and body before the pulp is added, so the final sauce thickens evenly rather than staying thin and watery.

Swap the shallot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, capsicum):

  1. Eggplantfits better
  2. Okrafits better
  3. Cucumberfits better
  4. Shallotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, capsicum. 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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