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Sauce

Tomato Catsup

A preserved tomato condiment made with tomatoes, sugar, spices, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,536 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Tomato Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Scald and skin the tomatoes.

Make the ketchup

  1. In a bowl, combine brown sugar, salt, cayenne pepper, allspice, mace, and cinnamon; mix thoroughly.

  2. Add the spice mixture to the tomatoes and stir in the cider vinegar.

  3. Mix thoroughly and press the mixture through a sieve.

  4. Transfer to a preserving kettle and boil slowly until reduced by half.

Bottle

  1. Pour into small bottles and seal.

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. Allspice + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Cider + vinegartop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,431 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

  4. Allspice + macetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Ripe tomatoes
Provide the main body, moisture and tomato flavor of the sauce.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the sharpness of the vinegar and tomatoes.
Cider vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and helps preserve the sauce.
Salt
Seasons the sauce and enhances the other flavors.

The step that matters

Boil slowly until reduced by half. Long, gentle simmering evaporates water and concentrates flavor and body. Boiling too hard or too briefly can scorch the sugar or leave the ketchup thin and watery.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Clovefits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Cardamomfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, sugar, pepper, allspice, cinnamon, cider, 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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