Skip to main content
Main

Tomato Catsup

A thick tomato sauce seasoned with salt, ginger, nutmeg, cloves, and cayenne, boiled and strained into bottles.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Nutmeg and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Tomato Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pulp

  1. Boil the tomatoes until soft.

  2. Press the cooked tomatoes through a fine sieve.

  3. Measure the tomato pulp.

  4. Add 4 teaspoons of salt for every quart of pulp.

  5. Boil for 1 hour after adding salt.

Season and cook

  1. Mix equal parts of ginger, nutmeg, and cloves.

  2. Add 4 teaspoons of this mixture and 4 teaspoons of cayenne for every quart of liquid.

  3. Stir in the seasoning.

  4. Boil until thick, for several hours.

Strain and bottle

  1. Strain into a pitcher, avoiding sediment.

  2. While hot, pour through a flannel bag into clean bottles.

  3. Cork tightly and seal the corks.

  4. Store in a dry, 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. Nutmeg + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Ginger + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Ginger + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Tomato + gingertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,887 recipes

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

  5. Tomato + clovetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes
Provide the main body, flavor and liquid that cooks down into the thick ketchup.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the pulp and helps draw out moisture while it boils.
Cloves
Add warm, aromatic spice flavor that gives the ketchup its characteristic taste.
Cayenne
Adds heat and a sharp, pungent note that balances the tomato sweetness.

The step that matters

Boil until thick, for several hours. Ketchup thickens only as water evaporates from the pulp. Too little boiling leaves it thin and watery, and it may spoil sooner in the bottle.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ginger, nutmeg, clove):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ginger, nutmeg, clove. 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

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesCream of Tomato SoupCream of Tomato Soup107 recipesTomato BisqueTomato Bisque61 recipesCream Tomato SoupCream Tomato Soup28 recipes