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Tomato Catsup

A fermented tomato sauce made with vinegar, salt, spices, and garlic, boiled and bottled.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Tomato Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Boil the tomatoes until soft.

  2. Squeeze them through a fine wire sieve.

Season and cook

  1. Add vinegar, salt, cloves, allspice, cayenne pepper, ground peppers, and garlic, and mix together.

  2. Boil for 3 hours, or until reduced by half.

Bottle

  1. Bottle without straining.

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. Tomato + garlictop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,076 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Allspice + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Ripe tomatoes
Provide the main body and bulk of the ketchup once cooked and sieved.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the ketchup its tang and helps preserve it.
Garlic
Contributes pungent aroma and savoury depth to the sauce.
Cloves
Adds warm, aromatic spice flavour to the sauce.
Allspice
Adds warm, aromatic spice flavour to the sauce.

The step that matters

Boil for 3 hours, or until reduced by half. Long simmering evaporates water and concentrates the sauce, so it thickens and its flavours intensify. Stopping too early leaves it thin and watery, while overcooking can make it too dense and sharp.

Swap the tomato

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

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

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