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Tomato Catsup

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Tomato Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomato juice

  1. Slice the tomatoes and boil them until soft.

  2. Strain the boiled tomatoes to extract the juice.

Make and bottle the ketchup

  1. In a large pot, combine the tomato juice with vinegar, salt, cloves, black pepper, cinnamon, allspice, mustard, and cayenne pepper.

  2. Boil the mixture for three hours, stirring occasionally, until it thickens.

  3. Bottle the catsup while hot.

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 + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Allspice + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,331 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

Tomatoes
Provide the main body, flavour and juice that the sauce is built from.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and helps preserve the sauce.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the sauce and draws out flavour, while helping to preserve it.
Black mustard
Contributes pungent, sharp flavour that balances the sweetness of the tomatoes.
White mustard
Adds a milder sharpness and tang to the sauce.

The step that matters

Boiling for three hours until thick. Long, gentle boiling evaporates water so the tomato juice concentrates and thickens. Stirring prevents the sugars and solids from scorching on the bottom of the pot.

Swap the tomato

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

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

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