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Tomato Catsup

A tomato-based condiment made by boiling tomatoes with salt, spices, and oil.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil the tomatoes with the salt and strain through a coarse sieve.

  2. Add the cloves, allspice, and cayenne to the strained tomatoes.

  3. Boil down the mixture until it reduces to 5 quarts.

  4. Bottle the catsup while hot and pour in the olive oil before corking.

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. Tomato + olivetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,539 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Allspice + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 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 body, flavour and liquid that is reduced into the thick sauce.
Coarse sea salt
Draws out moisture and seasons the tomatoes during the initial boil.
Powdered cloves
Add warm, aromatic spice flavour to the sauce.
Powdered allspice
Adds warm, aromatic spice flavour that rounds out the sauce.
Olive oil
Adds a small amount of fat and smoothness to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Boil down the mixture until it reduces to 5 quarts. Reducing by evaporation concentrates the tomato flavour and thickens the sauce. Stopping too early leaves it thin and watery, and over-reducing can scorch the sugars and make it bitter.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (clove, allspice, pepper, olive):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against clove, allspice, pepper, olive. 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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