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Sauce

Cold Catsup

A cold tomato sauce made with tomatoes, salt, mustard seed, nasturtium, horseradish, celery seed, black pepper, cinnamon, allspice, mace, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and horseradish 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. Peel, cut, and drain the tomatoes for six hours.

  2. Mash the tomatoes finely by hand, removing all hard pieces.

Season and bottle

  1. Add the salt, mustard seed, nasturtium, horseradish, celery seed, black pepper, cinnamon, allspice, mace, and vinegar.

  2. Bottle the mixture without sealing.

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. Mustard + horseradishtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Mustard + allspicetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,928 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

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

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, bulk and flavor base of the ketchup.
Mustard seed
Adds sharp, pungent heat and a slightly bitter note that balances the sweetness of the tomatoes.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the ketchup its tang and helps preserve it.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the mixture and draws moisture out of the tomatoes.

The step that matters

Bottle the mixture without sealing. Because the ketchup is not sealed, it can keep fermenting or spoiling if the acidity and salt are not sufficient. Leaving it unsealed lets gas escape rather than building pressure in the bottle.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Clovefits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

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