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Pepper Catsup

A spicy pepper condiment made by boiling bell peppers with vinegar, spices, onions, sugar, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Pepper Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and cook

  1. Remove seeds from the bell peppers and chop them.

  2. Combine the chopped peppers and vinegar in a pot.

  3. Boil until you can mash the pulp through a sieve.

Season and finish

  1. Season with cloves, mace, spice, onions, and salt.

  2. Add sugar and boil until the mixture reaches the desired consistency.

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. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Clove + oniontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,901 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  5. Vinegar + oniontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,226 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

What each ingredient does

Bell peppers
Provide the main body, flavour and pulp that becomes the catsup.
Vinegar
Acidity that softens the peppers and gives the catsup its tang.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps thicken the mixture as it boils down.

The step that matters

Boil until the mixture reaches the desired consistency. Catsup thickens only as water evaporates during long boiling. Stopping too early leaves it thin, while overcooking can make it stiff and sticky once cooled.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, vinegar, clove, onion, sugar. 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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