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Tomato Catsup

A thick tomato sauce made by boiling tomatoes, onions, spices, and vinegar, then bottling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Tomato Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pulp

  1. Boil the tomatoes and onions together until soft.

  2. Press the mixture through a colander.

  3. Strain the liquid through a fine sieve.

Reduce the sauce

  1. Put the liquid over the fire with the seasoning and boil for five hours, stirring occasionally.

  2. When the liquid is reduced by nearly half and thick, add the vinegar and remove the bag of celery seed.

Bottle and store

  1. Bottle the catsup when it is cold.

  2. Seal the corks.

  3. Store in a cellar or cool, dark closet.

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. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  4. Garlic + parsleytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,308 recipes

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

  5. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Ripe tomatoes
Form the main body and flavour base of the ketchup.
Onions
Add savoury sweetness and body to the cooked pulp.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens flavour and helps preserve the ketchup.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the tomato's acidity.

The step that matters

Long reduction of the liquid. Boiling for hours evaporates water and concentrates the tomato solids, so the sauce thickens. Stopping too early leaves it thin, and the vinegar added afterward is then not mellowed by the cooking.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, onion, garlic, parsley, sugar, clove, pepper):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Cuminfits better
  3. Oreganofits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, onion, garlic, parsley, sugar, clove, pepper. 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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