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Tomato Ketchup

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice 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 Ketchup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Wipe the tomatoes and place them in a kettle. Cover and heat until they burst.

  2. Discard the water and let the tomatoes cool.

  3. Pass the pulp through a sieve.

Season and cook

  1. Measure the pulp and add ⅔ cup of coarse sea salt, ¼ cup of whole cloves, ¼ cup of whole allspice, ½ teaspoon of mustard, ¼ teaspoon of ginger, and ¼ teaspoon of cayenne for each quart.

  2. Add 2 onions (to be removed after boiling) and ⅔ cup of vinegar. Cover and boil for 20 minutes.

  3. After boiling, stir in 1 wineglassful of brandy.

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 + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Allspice + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,620 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Allspice + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,928 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Mustard + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 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 bulk, pulp, and fresh tomato flavor that forms the ketchup base.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and helps preserve the finished ketchup.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the ketchup and draws out moisture from the pulp during cooking.
Onions
Add aromatic flavor to the pulp while boiling; they are removed afterward.
Brandy
Adds aroma and depth of flavor when stirred in after boiling.

The step that matters

Passing the pulp through a sieve. Cooked tomato skins and seeds must be fully separated, since leftover bits leave the ketchup coarse and grainy in texture.

Swap the tomato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against clove, allspice, mustard, ginger, onion, vinegar, brandy. 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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