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Sauce

Cold Catsup

A chilled tomato-based condiment made with tomatoes, salt, sugar, mustard seed, horseradish, cayenne pepper, red peppers, onions, and cider vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and horseradish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,832 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Cold Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Skin and chop the tomatoes, then place them in a sieve to drain for 2 hours.

  2. Discard the drained water.

Combine and store

  1. In a large bowl, combine the tomatoes with salt, sugar, mustard seed, horseradish, cayenne pepper, red peppers, onions, and cider vinegar. Mix well and store in a sealed container.

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. Mustard + horseradishtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  3. Cider + vinegartop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,431 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

  4. Horseradish + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,784 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  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 liquid base of the ketchup.
Coarse sea salt
Draws out moisture and seasons the sauce.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the acidity of the vinegar.
Cider vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens flavor and helps preserve the sauce.
White mustard seed
Adds pungent flavor and a slight texture to the sauce.
Grated horseradish
Contributes sharp, pungent heat that gives the sauce its bite.

The step that matters

Draining the tomatoes. Draining removes excess water from the tomatoes. Without it, the ketchup will be thin and may dilute its seasoning and acidity, so the flavor and texture will be weaker.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, mustard, horseradish, pepper, onion, cider, vinegar):

  1. Broccolifits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Radishfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, mustard, horseradish, pepper, onion, cider, vinegar. 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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