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Tomato Catsup

A thick tomato-based condiment made with tomatoes, salt, mustard, spices, and cider vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Tomato Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Heat and strain the tomatoes.

  2. Add salt, mustard, black pepper, allspice, cloves, cinnamon, mace, cayenne pepper, and cider vinegar.

  3. Boil the mixture until it reaches a proper thickness.

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 + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Allspice + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Pepper + clovetop 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

Tomatoes
Form the bulk of the sauce and provide its base flavour and body.
Cider vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and helps preserve the sauce.
Mustard
Adds pungent flavour and some emulsifying compounds that support a smooth sauce.
Salt
Seasons the sauce and draws out moisture from the tomatoes.

The step that matters

Boil the mixture until it reaches a proper thickness. Tomatoes contain a lot of water, so boiling slowly reduces the liquid and concentrates flavour. Stopping too early leaves a thin sauce, while overcooking can make it dull and sticky.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, mustard, pepper, allspice, clove, cinnamon, cider):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Cardamomfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, mustard, pepper, allspice, clove, cinnamon, cider. 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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