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Tomato Catsup

A preserved tomato sauce made with tomatoes, salt, spices, and vinegar, simmered for hours and bottled.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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. Select good ripe tomatoes and scald them.

  2. Strain the tomatoes through a coarse sieve to remove seeds and skins.

Cook and bottle

  1. Once cold, add salt, ground mustard, black pepper, cayenne pepper, ground allspice, ground cloves, and vinegar.

  2. Simmer the mixture slowly for 4 hours.

  3. Bottle and cork tightly.

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

Ripe tomatoes
Provide the main body, moisture and tomato flavour of the sauce.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the sauce and helps draw out moisture during the long simmer.
Cider or white wine vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the ketchup its tang and helps keep it stable.
Ground mustard
Adds sharp, pungent flavour that balances the sweetness of the tomatoes.

The step that matters

Simmering slowly for 4 hours. A slow, gentle simmer lets water evaporate and the sauce thicken without scorching on the bottom of the pan. Too much heat can burn the sugars and dull the fresh tomato flavour.

Swap the tomato

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

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

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