Skip to main content
Sauce

Tomato Catsup

A sauce made from tomatoes, vinegar, spices, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cinnamon and clove 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. Boil and mash the tomatoes through a sieve.

  2. Place the cinnamon and cloves in a sack and boil them with the vinegar.

Make the ketchup

  1. Add the salt, sugar, cayenne pepper, and black pepper to the tomato mixture.

  2. Boil all ingredients together until thickened.

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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  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. Cinnamon + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,890 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

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, flavor, and liquid that the ketchup is built on.
Cider vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens flavor and helps preserve the ketchup.
White sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the acidity and tartness of the tomatoes and vinegar.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the ketchup and draws out flavor from the tomatoes.

The step that matters

Boil all ingredients together until thickened. Long simmering evaporates water and concentrates the tomato solids, so the sauce thickens. Stopping too early leaves it thin and watery, while overcooking can scorch the sugar and tomatoes on the bottom of the pot.

Swap the tomato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cider, vinegar, cinnamon, clove, sugar, pepper. 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

Cider SauceCider Sauce15 recipesWine Sauce (for stewed fruit)Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)186 recipesCaper SauceCaper Sauce180 recipesBrown SauceBrown Sauce141 recipes