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Tomato Catsup

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and garlic are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,076 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Tomato Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Boil the tomatoes until soft.

  2. Rub the tomatoes through a wire sieve.

Make the ketchup

  1. Add cider vinegar, coarse sea salt, whole pepper, allspice, black pepper, red pepper pod, and garlic to the mixture.

  2. Boil until reduced to half the quantity.

  3. When cold, strain through a colander and bottle, sealing the corks.

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 + garlictop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,076 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Cider + vinegartop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,431 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

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

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

  5. Pepper + garlictop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,090 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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, flavour and thick texture of the ketchup.
Cider vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and helps preserve the sauce.
Garlic
Adds pungent aroma and savoury depth to the sauce.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the sauce and draws out flavour from the tomatoes.

The step that matters

Boil until reduced to half the quantity. Long boiling evaporates water and concentrates the tomato solids, giving the ketchup its thickness and flavour. Stopping early leaves it thin and more prone to spoiling, while overcooking can scorch the sugars and make it bitter.

Swap the allspice

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, cider, vinegar, pepper, garlic):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Corianderfits better
  3. Basilfits better
  4. Allspicethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, cider, vinegar, pepper, garlic. 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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