Name: Grape Ketchup
Ingredients: 175 g ground cloves; 1 tablespoon ground cinnamon; 1 tablespoon ground pepper; ½ tablespoon coarse sea salt

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 ↓

Grape Ketchup

Ingredients

175 g ground cloves
1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
1 tablespoon ground pepper
½ tablespoon coarse sea salt

Directions

Combine ground cloves, cinnamon, pepper, and coarse sea salt in a pot.
Boil the mixture until it thickens slightly.
Bottle the ketchup and seal it.

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.

Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,189 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).
Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together17,451 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
Cinnamon + peppertop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together4,890 recipes

Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).