Skip to main content
Preserve

Tomato Catsup

A preserved tomato condiment made by stewing tomatoes with spices and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Allspice and clove 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

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Layer sliced tomatoes in an earthen vessel, sprinkling salt between layers. Let sit for 12 hours.

  2. Stew tomatoes slowly until soft.

  3. Rub through a fine sieve and return to the pot.

Make the ketchup

  1. Add vinegar, mustard powder, black pepper, cayenne, allspice, and cloves.

  2. Simmer for 1.5 hours.

Bottle

  1. Let cool, then bottle and seal.

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. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Mustard + allspicetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,928 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

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, flavor and bulk of the ketchup once cooked and sieved.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the ketchup its sharp tang and helps keep it stable.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the tomatoes during the long rest, concentrating their flavor.
Mustard powder
Adds pungent, sharp flavor that balances the sweetness of the tomatoes.
Cayenne pepper
Adds heat that gives the ketchup a lingering background spice.

The step that matters

Simmer slowly after adding the vinegar and spices. Long simmering evaporates excess water and blends the acid and spices into the tomato base. Too little cooking leaves the sauce thin and sharp, while overcooking can scorch the sugars and dull the flavor.

Swap the tomato

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

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

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

More tomato ketchup recipes

Green 26 See all 523 →

You might also like

Green Corn PuddingGreen Corn Pudding64 recipesCornmeal mushCornmeal mush12 recipes