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Sauce

Currant Catsup

A sweet and spicy sauce made from currant juice, sugar, spices, vinegar, and salt.

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

Currant Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine currant juice, sugar, cinnamon, cloves, mustard, black pepper, vinegar, and coarse sea salt in a large pot.

  2. Boil the mixture well, stirring frequently to prevent scorching.

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Cinnamon + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,581 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Clove + mustardtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,829 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

What each ingredient does

Currant juice
Provides the fruit base and tartness that give the ketchup its body and flavor.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and, as it dissolves and thickens during boiling, helps give the ketchup body.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavor and helps preserve the ketchup.
Cinnamon
Contributes warm, aromatic spice flavor.
Cloves
Contributes strong aromatic spice flavor.

The step that matters

Boiling and stirring. Sugar-rich fruit mixtures scorch easily on the bottom of a pot, and scorched sugar gives a bitter, burnt taste. Frequent stirring during a long boil spreads heat evenly and lets the mixture thicken smoothly.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Limefits better
  2. Lemonfits better
  3. Cherryfits better
  4. Currantthe original

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

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