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Tomato Ketchup

A preserved tomato sauce made with tomatoes, salt, spices, vinegar, and stored in bottles.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Tomato Ketchup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Wash the tomatoes and add the salt; let them stand overnight.

  2. Put the tomatoes in a stewpan and boil gently for 2 hours.

  3. Rub the mixture through a sieve.

Season and finish

  1. Season with salt, cayenne pepper, and cloves to taste.

  2. Add the wine vinegar and boil for 2 more hours.

  3. Rinse bottles with brandy, then fill with ketchup and cork tightly.

  4. Store in a cool place.

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. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

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

  3. Wine + brandytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,427 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  4. Tomato + winetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,759 recipes

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

  5. Tomato + clovetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Ripe tomatoes
Provide the main body, flavour and liquid that the ketchup is built from.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the tomatoes overnight and seasons the base.
Wine vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens flavour and helps preserve the finished ketchup.

The step that matters

Boiling the vinegar in for two more hours. Long, gentle boiling thickens the sieved tomato through evaporation and mellows the sharp vinegar. Stopping early leaves a thin, sour sauce.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, clove, wine, vinegar, brandy):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Tomatothe original
  4. Mustardfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, clove, wine, 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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