Skip to main content
Main

Tomato Catsup

A preserved tomato sauce seasoned with salt, cayenne, cloves, nutmeg, mace, and wine.

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

Why it works: Clove and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Tomato Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Cut the tomatoes in half and place them in a dish.

  2. Sprinkle a little salt over the tomatoes and let them stand for 3-4 hours.

  3. Drain off the water from the tomatoes.

Cook and strain

  1. Place the tomatoes in a preserving kettle with 1 pint of water and stew them for 2 hours.

  2. Strain the mixture through a colander and return it to the kettle.

Season and bottle

  1. Add ½ cup coarse sea salt, ½ ounce cayenne pepper, 1 ounce cloves, 1 ounce nutmeg, 1 ounce mace, and 1 quart of good white wine.

  2. Boil the mixture for 1 hour.

  3. Bottle the mixture when it is cold and seal the bottles 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. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Nutmeg + macetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes
Form the bulk of the ketchup and provide its body, acidity and flavour once stewed.
White wine
Adds acidity and a sharp tang that balances the sweetness of the tomatoes.
Cloves
Contribute warm, aromatic spice notes to the ketchup.
Nutmeg
Adds warm, aromatic spice notes to the ketchup.
Mace
Adds a delicate, warm aroma to the ketchup.

The step that matters

Boil the mixture for 1 hour. Long boiling concentrates the tomato liquid and drives off water, thickening the sauce and mellowing the spices. Too little boiling leaves the ketchup thin and harsh-tasting, and it may not keep well once bottled.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, clove, nutmeg, mace, white wine):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, clove, nutmeg, mace, white wine. 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

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesCream of Tomato SoupCream of Tomato Soup107 recipesTomato BisqueTomato Bisque61 recipesCream Tomato SoupCream Tomato Soup28 recipes