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Sauce

Tomato Ketchup

A preserved tomato sauce made with tomatoes, spices, vinegar, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Tomato Ketchup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the tomatoes.

  2. Dry the tomatoes.

  3. Cut the tomatoes into pieces.

Make the ketchup

  1. Boil the tomatoes for about 30 minutes.

  2. Strain the mixture through a fine sieve.

  3. Mix the strained tomatoes with the spices.

  4. Boil the mixture for 8 hours over high heat.

Bottle and seal

  1. Pour the hot ketchup into clean bottles that have been immersed in hot water.

  2. Let the bottles stand until the next day.

  3. Cork the bottles with new stoppers and seal with sealing wax.

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 + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Allspice + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Ginger + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Clove + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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 their pulp thickens as it cooks down.
Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that balances the sweetness and the richness of the tomatoes.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that rounds out the acidity and spices.
Cinnamon
Adds warm aroma that gives the ketchup its spiced character.
Mustard seed
Adds a pungent, savoury note that deepens the overall flavour.

The step that matters

Boil the mixture for 8 hours over high heat. A long boil evaporates water, concentrating flavour and thickening the ketchup. High heat over such a long time risks scorching the bottom, so the mixture needs close attention and frequent stirring.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, allspice, clove, ginger, cinnamon, mace, mustard):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Turmericfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, allspice, clove, ginger, cinnamon, mace, mustard. 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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