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Tomato Catsup

A thick tomato sauce seasoned with salt, pepper, cinnamon, cloves, allspice, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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. Strain 1 gallon of tomatoes.

Make the ketchup

  1. In a large pot, combine the strained tomatoes with salt, black pepper, cinnamon, cloves, and allspice.

  2. Boil the mixture and then add the reduced vinegar.

  3. Simmer until thickened to your desired consistency.

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Strained tomatoes
Form the bulk of the sauce and provide its body and main flavour.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and helps preserve the sauce.
Salt
Seasons the sauce and draws out flavour from the tomatoes.
Allspice
Adds warm, aromatic spice notes that define the ketchup's flavour.

The step that matters

Simmer until thickened. Tomatoes contain a lot of water, and the sauce thickens only as that water evaporates slowly over heat. Stopping too early leaves it thin; cooking too long can scorch the bottom of the pot and darken the flavour.

Swap the tomato

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

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

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

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