Skip to main content
Sauce

Tomato Catsup

A tomato-based sauce made by stewing tomatoes with spices and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Tomato Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Wash and slice the tomatoes, then place them in a preserving kettle.

  2. Let them stew gently until quite soft without stirring.

  3. Strain the juice through a sieve and pour it back into the kettle.

Season and reduce

  1. Add the cloves, allspice, coarse sea salt, and cayenne pepper.

  2. Boil the mixture down by half.

Finish and bottle

  1. Strain out the spices, then add ½ cup of vinegar for every pint of juice.

  2. Bottle the catsup for use.

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Allspice + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

  5. Tomato + clovetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes
Provide the main bulk, sweetness, and pulp that becomes the body of the ketchup.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and helps preserve the finished ketchup.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the sauce and sharpens the flavors of the tomatoes and spices.
Cloves
Contribute warm, aromatic spice flavor infused into the cooking juice.
Allspice
Contributes warm, aromatic spice flavor infused into the cooking juice.

The step that matters

Boil the mixture down by half. Reducing concentrates the tomato juice and thickens it into a sauce. Stopping too early leaves it thin and watery, while over-reducing can scorch the sugars on the bottom of the kettle, so stir and watch closely near the end.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against clove, allspice, pepper, 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.

More tomato ketchup recipes

Green 26 See all 523 →

You might also like

Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)186 recipesCaper SauceCaper Sauce180 recipesBrown SauceBrown Sauce141 recipesDutch SauceDutch Sauce74 recipes