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Tomato Catsup

A fermented tomato sauce thickened with sugar, salt, pepper, and cinnamon, bottled while hot.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,923 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Tomato Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

Ferment the tomatoes

  1. Wash and cut the tomatoes into pieces.

  2. Place them in a stone jar with the salt, tie it closed, and let it ferment for four days.

  3. After four days, remove the top and discard it.

  4. Squeeze the water out of the tomatoes, then heat and strain through a sieve.

Season and bottle

  1. For every gallon of juice, add the sugar, black pepper, salt, and ground cinnamon.

  2. Boil the mixture until it thickens.

  3. Bottle and seal 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. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,890 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  3. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Tomato + cinnamontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,348 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Sugar + peppertop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,401 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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, juice and flavour of the ketchup.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the acidity of the fermented tomatoes.
Salt
Seasons the ketchup and helps draw out water and preserve the tomatoes.
Black pepper
Adds mild heat and aroma to the seasoning.
Ground cinnamon
Adds warm, aromatic spice notes to the sauce.

The step that matters

Boil the mixture until it thickens. Boiling evaporates water and concentrates the sugars and pulp, so the sauce sets to a thick consistency. Stopping early leaves it thin and more prone to spoiling once bottled.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Sweet potatofits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, pepper, cinnamon. 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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