Skip to main content
Main

Tomato Catsup

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cinnamon and clove 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

  1. Cook and strain 2 gallons of tomatoes through a coarse sieve.

  2. Add salt, mustard, black pepper, cinnamon, cloves, cayenne pepper, and vinegar.

  3. Boil the mixture until thick.

  4. Bottle the catsup and set it aside.

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Mustard + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,581 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  5. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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, pulp and flavor base of the ketchup.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens flavor and helps preserve the finished sauce.
Salt
Seasons the sauce and draws out flavor from the tomatoes.

The step that matters

Boil the mixture until thick. Cooking long enough lets water evaporate and the tomato pulp concentrate into a thick sauce. Stopping too early leaves it thin and watery, while overcooking can scorch the sugars and dull the flavor.

Swap the tomato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against mustard, pepper, cinnamon, clove, 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.

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