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Tokato Catsup

A tomato-based sauce made with cloves, allspice, mace, salt, cayenne pepper, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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 ↓

Tokato Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Wash the tomatoes and slice them.

  2. Place the sliced tomatoes in a large pot and let them stew gently until soft, without stirring.

  3. Strain the juice through a sieve.

Spice and reduce

  1. Pour the strained juice back into the pot and add the cloves, allspice, mace, salt, and cayenne pepper.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil and reduce it until the volume is halved.

Finish and bottle

  1. The next day, strain out the spices.

  2. Add ½ cup of vinegar for every pint of juice.

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

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Allspice + macetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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, juice and tomato flavor of the ketchup.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the ketchup its tang and helps keep it stable.
Cloves
Contribute warm, aromatic spice flavor to the finished sauce.
Allspice
Adds warm, aromatic spice flavor that deepens the sauce.
Mace
Adds a delicate, warm aroma to the spiced sauce.

The step that matters

Reducing the juice until the volume is halved. Cooking down the juice concentrates its flavor and thickens it, and evaporating water is what gives the sauce its body. Stopping too early leaves it thin and watery, while reducing too far can make it overly thick or scorched on the bottom of the pot.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, 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.

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