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Sauce

Tomato Catsup

A preserved tomato sauce made with tomatoes, salt, pepper, mustard, red peppers, cloves, allspice, and cider vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Tomato Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Pour boiling water over the tomatoes, remove the skins and any bad spots.

Cook the tomatoes

  1. Boil the tomatoes slowly in a porcelain kettle for about 3 hours, stirring often from the bottom, especially when nearly done.

  2. Add salt, pepper, ground mustard, chopped red peppers, cloves, and allspice.

  3. Stir the spices into the cider vinegar and mix thoroughly.

  4. Simmer the mixture for half an hour.

Bottle

  1. Bottle and seal 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 + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Ripe tomatoes
Form the main body, pulp and bulk of the ketchup as they cook down.
Cider vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that balances the sweetness of the cooked tomatoes.
Red peppers
Add body and mild sweetness, along with fresh pepper flavor, to the sauce.

The step that matters

Stirring from the bottom during the final stage of the boil. Tomato solids and natural sugars settle and scorch on the base of the pan as the mixture thickens, which gives a burnt taste. Frequent stirring near the end keeps the sauce even and prevents sticking.

Swap the tomato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, mustard, clove, allspice, 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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