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Sauce

Cold Catsup

A chilled tomato-based condiment made with tomatoes, peppers, horseradish, spices, sugar, and cider vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Horseradish and mustard 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. Chop the tomatoes finely and drain them overnight with the coarse sea salt.

Make the ketchup

  1. Add the chopped red peppers, onion, grated horseradish, mustard seed, celery seed, black pepper, cinnamon, cloves, sugar, and cider vinegar.

  2. Mix all ingredients cold and seal in jars.

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. Horseradish + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Mustard + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Tomato + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  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

Tomatoes
Provide the main body and liquid of the ketchup.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the tomatoes during overnight draining, concentrating their flavor.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the acidity of the vinegar and tomatoes.
Cider vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the ketchup its tang and helps keep it preserved.
Horseradish
Contributes sharp, pungent heat that fades the longer the ketchup sits.

The step that matters

Drain the tomatoes overnight with the salt. Salt draws excess water out of the chopped tomatoes. Skipping or shortening this drain leaves a thin, watery ketchup that separates in the jar.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, pepper, horseradish, mustard, celery, cinnamon, clove):

  1. Lettucefits better
  2. Broccolifits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, pepper, horseradish, mustard, celery, cinnamon, 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.

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