Skip to main content
Drink

Tomato Ketchup

A fermented tomato sauce made by layering tomatoes with salt, boiling with spices, and reboiling after months.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Allspice and clove 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

Salt the tomatoes

  1. Slice the tomatoes and layer them in a jar, sprinkling salt between each layer until the jar is full.

  2. Stir the contents daily for 3-4 days in a warm place by the fire.

Strain and spice

  1. Press the juice from the tomatoes through a sieve using a wooden spoon.

  2. Boil the juice with 2 ounces of mixed spices for flavor.

Finish the ketchup

  1. After 3 months, boil the ketchup again with fresh spices.

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. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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, moisture and tangy acidity of the ketchup.
Mixed spices
Add the warm, aromatic flavor that defines the ketchup.

The step that matters

Layering the tomatoes with salt. Salt draws water out of the tomatoes by osmosis, softening them and concentrating their flavor while helping to inhibit spoilage during the long standing period.

Swap the tomato

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

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

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

More tomato ketchup recipes

Green 26 See all 523 →

You might also like

Ginger PopGinger Pop22 recipesGinger WineGinger Wine12 recipesGinger BeerGinger Beer11 recipesGinger TeaGinger Tea9 recipes