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Tomato Catsup

A thick tomato sauce made with tomatoes, vinegar, spices, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon 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

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Boil and mash the tomatoes thoroughly through a colander.

Make the ketchup

  1. Add vinegar, black pepper, cayenne pepper, allspice, cloves, salt, mustard seed, and cinnamon to the tomatoes.

  2. Boil the mixture hard for 4 hours.

  3. Remove from heat and let it sit on the back of the stove overnight.

  4. Bottle the catsup the next morning.

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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Allspice + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Allspice + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,928 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Pepper + clovetop 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 sweet tomato flavor of the sauce.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the ketchup its sharp tang and helps preserve it.
Mustard seed
Contributes a pungent, slightly bitter note that rounds out the spice blend.
Black pepper
Adds sharp, mildly hot spice that builds the sauce's savory depth.

The step that matters

Boil the mixture hard for 4 hours. Long, vigorous boiling evaporates water and concentrates the tomato solids, thickening the sauce. Stopping early leaves it thin and watery, and the flavors stay raw and separate rather than blending.

Swap the tomato

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

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

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