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Sauce

Gooseberry Catsup

A preserved sauce made from boiled gooseberries, vinegar, sugar, raisins, spices, and mustard, then sieved and stored.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and turmeric match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,776 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Gooseberry Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil the vinegar, currants, gooseberries, and chilies until quite soft.

  2. Pour the mixture through a fine sieve onto the remaining ingredients.

  3. Mix well and store in a cool place.

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. Ginger + turmerictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,776 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Mustard + turmerictop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,279 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Mustard + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

  4. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Onion + turmerictop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,913 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Gooseberries
Provide tart fruit pulp and natural pectin that helps the ketchup thicken.
Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that balances sweetness and helps preserve the ketchup.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and a molasses note that rounds out the sharp vinegar.

The step that matters

Boil until quite soft. The fruit and chilies must soften fully so their cell walls break down and the pectin releases. Only then will the mixture pass smoothly through a fine sieve, leaving skins and seeds behind.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vinegar, sugar, raisin, mustard, onion, ginger, turmeric):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, sugar, raisin, mustard, onion, ginger, turmeric. 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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