Skip to main content
Sauce

Tomato Catsup

A tomato-based sauce seasoned with salt, vinegar, mustard, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Tomato Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the tomato base

  1. Wash the tomatoes, slice them, and cook until soft.

  2. Let the tomatoes cool, then rub them through a sieve.

  3. Place the sieved tomatoes over the fire.

  4. Add the salt and cook down the mixture.

Season and seal

  1. Mix in the vinegar, mustard, cinnamon, cloves, allspice, and cayenne pepper.

  2. Boil for a few minutes 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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Mustard + allspicetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,928 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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, moisture and tomato flavour of the ketchup.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the ketchup its sharp flavour and helps preserve it.
Mustard
Adds pungent flavour that balances the sweetness and acidity of the tomatoes.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the mixture and helps draw moisture out as it cooks down.

The step that matters

Cook the mixture down after adding the salt. Reducing over heat concentrates the tomato solids and thickens the sauce. Stopping too early leaves it thin and watery, while overcooking can scorch the sugars on the bottom of the pan.

Swap the tomato

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

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

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

More tomato ketchup recipes

Green 26 See all 523 →

You might also like

Mixed MustardMixed Mustard9 recipesWine Sauce (for stewed fruit)Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)186 recipesCaper SauceCaper Sauce180 recipesBrown SauceBrown Sauce141 recipes