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Tomato Catsup, No. 2

A sun‑cured tomato sauce seasoned with spices and sweet oil.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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, No. 2

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Layer sliced tomatoes in a deep vessel, sprinkling salt between layers.

  2. Let them sit in the sun for 2-3 days until soft.

  3. Pass the softened tomatoes through a sieve to extract the pulp.

Make the ketchup

  1. Boil the pulp over heat, adding cayenne pepper, black pepper, mace, cloves, allspice, and ginger if desired.

  2. Cook until thick, then add a clove of garlic.

  3. Taste and adjust seasoning as needed.

Bottle

  1. Once cooled, bottle the catsup, adding ½ cup of sweet oil on top of each bottle, and seal the corks.

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. Clove + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Allspice + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,620 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Tomato + garlictop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,076 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes
Provide the pulp that forms the body and bulk of the ketchup.
Salt
Draws moisture out of the tomatoes and helps soften them during salting.
Cloves
Add a warm, pungent aroma that defines the spiced flavour.
Allspice
Adds warm, aromatic flavour that rounds out the spice blend.
Garlic
Adds pungent aroma to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Cook until thick. Tomato pulp must reduce enough to become thick; under-cooking leaves the ketchup watery and prone to spoiling, while over-reduction can make it pasty and dull in flavour.

Swap the ginger

The recipe marks ginger as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, pepper, mace, clove, allspice, garlic):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits about as well
  3. Cinnamonfits about as well
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, pepper, mace, clove, allspice, garlic. 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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