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Tomato Catsup

A preserved tomato sauce made by boiling tomatoes, onions, vinegar, spices, sugar, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Tomato Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Skin the tomatoes and boil them until soft.

  2. Skin the onions and chop them finely.

Make the ketchup

  1. Combine all ingredients in a pot and boil together for about three hours.

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 + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

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

  4. Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  5. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 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 main body, flavour and liquid base of the ketchup.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens flavour and helps preserve the ketchup.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the acidity of the vinegar and tomatoes.
Onions
Add savoury depth and aroma to the tomato base.

The step that matters

Long boil of the combined ingredients. Simmering for about three hours lets water evaporate so the mixture thickens into a ketchup. Stopping early leaves it thin, while the sugar and tomato solids can scorch on the bottom of the pot if heat is too high and the mixture is not stirred.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, onion, vinegar, clove, pepper, sugar):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Cinnamonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, onion, vinegar, clove, pepper, sugar. 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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