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Tomato Catsup

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

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

  1. Boil and strain the tomatoes.

Make the ketchup

  1. In a large pot, combine the strained tomatoes with salt, cloves, cinnamon, allspice, black pepper, cayenne pepper, vinegar, and sugar.

  2. Boil the mixture until it thickens.

Bottle

  1. Bottle the catsup while hot.

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. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Allspice + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes
Form the bulk of the sauce and provide its main body, flavor, and liquid to reduce.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and helps preserve the sauce.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the acidity and salt.
Salt
Seasons the sauce and draws out flavor from the tomatoes.

The step that matters

Boil the mixture until it thickens. Tomatoes contain a lot of water, and the sauce only thickens as that water evaporates during a long, steady boil. Stopping early leaves a thin ketchup, while overcooking can scorch the sugars on the bottom of the pot.

Swap the tomato

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

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

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