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Sauce

Tomato Catsup

A homemade tomato sauce thickened with salt, pepper, mustard, allspice, and vinegar, bottled while hot.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,928 recipes. Both carry methyleugenol, which smells clove, spice. The science ↓

Tomato Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil the tomatoes until soft enough to rub through a sieve.

  2. Add salt, pepper, mustard, allspice, and vinegar to the pulp and juice.

  3. Boil until thickened.

  4. Strain through a sieve.

  5. While hot, pour into bottles and seal.

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. Mustard + allspicetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,928 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

  4. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 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 bulk of the pulp, sweetness, and acidity that form the ketchup's body.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens flavour and helps preserve the finished ketchup.
Ground mustard
Adds pungent flavour that balances the sweetness of the tomatoes.
Ground black pepper
Adds mild heat and aroma to the sauce.

The step that matters

Boil until thickened. Tomato pulp contains a lot of water, so it must be boiled long enough to evaporate excess moisture. Stopping early leaves a thin ketchup that may spoil sooner once bottled.

Swap the allspice

The recipe marks allspice as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, pepper, mustard, vinegar):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Dillfits better
  3. Celeryfits better
  4. Allspicethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, pepper, mustard, vinegar. 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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