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Tomato Catsup

A tomato-based sauce made with peppers, onions, spices, vinegar, and Worcestershire sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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

Prepare

  1. Chop the tomatoes, green peppers, and onions.

  2. Combine all ingredients in a pot and cook until tender.

Strain and boil

  1. Pass the mixture through a sieve.

  2. Boil the strained mixture for 1 hour.

  3. Just before bottling, stir in the Worcestershire sauce.

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. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 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

Tomatoes
Form the bulk of the sauce and supply its body, moisture and tomato flavour.
Green peppers
Add vegetal bitterness and fresh, sharp flavour that balances the sweetness.
Onions
Add savoury depth and aroma as they soften and break down into the sauce.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens flavour and helps preserve the ketchup.
Cloves
Contribute warm, aromatic spice notes to the sauce.
Cinnamon
Contributes warm, sweet spice aroma to the sauce.

The step that matters

Boil the strained mixture for 1 hour. Long boiling evaporates water and concentrates the sauce, thickening it and deepening its flavour. Too short a boil leaves it thin and watery, so it must be cooked long enough to reduce.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, pepper, vinegar, clove, cinnamon, allspice, sauce. 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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