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Tomato Catsup

A preserved tomato sauce made by boiling tomatoes with spices, vinegar, and sugar, then bottling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and clove 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 the tomatoes

  1. Wipe tomatoes with a damp cloth, remove cores, and place in a porcelain-lined iron kettle.

  2. Add water, peach leaves, and chopped onions or shallots. Boil for about 2 hours until tomatoes are done.

  3. Strain the mixture through a coarse-mesh sieve and return the liquid to the kettle.

Season and cook

  1. Add cider vinegar and mix in ground spice, black pepper, mustard, cloves, nutmeg, brown sugar, and salt.

  2. Boil for 2 hours, stirring continuously to prevent burning. Add cayenne pepper if desired.

Bottle and store

  1. When cool, fill bottles, cork, and seal with bottle wax to exclude air.

  2. Store in a cool, dry place for future 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. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

  3. Cider + vinegartop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,431 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

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

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

  5. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 ketchup and supply its main body and flavour once cooked down.
Onions or shallots
Add savoury depth and aromatic sweetness to the base as they cook.
Cider vinegar
Provides acidity that gives the ketchup its tang and helps preserve it.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the acidity and rounds out the spices.
Mustard
Adds sharp, pungent heat that complements the tomato and spices.

The step that matters

Long boil with constant stirring. Tomato sugars scorch easily on the hot base of a kettle, so stirring throughout the two-hour boil prevents burnt flavour and sticking as the mixture thickens and reduces.

Swap the peach

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

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Cherryfits better
  4. Peachthe original

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