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Tomato Ketchup

A homemade tomato ketchup made by simmering tomatoes with seasonings and reducing the liquid.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 Ketchup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Sprinkle the tomatoes with coarse sea salt and let them sit for 1-2 days.

  2. Boil the tomatoes until the skins separate easily.

  3. Pour the tomatoes into a colander or coarse sieve and press them through to remove the skins.

Make the ketchup

  1. Add shallots, chili vinegar, wine, pepper, cloves, ginger, and allspice to the tomato liquid.

  2. Boil the mixture until it reduces by one-third.

Bottle and serve

  1. Bottle the ketchup and seal the bottles securely.

  2. Shake before use.

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. Ginger + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,620 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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, flavor and liquid base of the ketchup.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the tomatoes and seasons them before cooking.
Shallots
Add savory, mild onion-like aroma to the sauce.
Chili vinegar
Adds acidity and sharpness, and helps preserve the ketchup.
Wine
Adds acidity and depth of flavor to the sauce.

The step that matters

Boil the mixture until it reduces by one-third. Reducing the liquid concentrates the tomato flavor and thickens the sauce. Stopping too early leaves it thin and watery, while over-reducing makes it too dense.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (shallot, vinegar, wine, pepper, clove, ginger, allspice):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against shallot, vinegar, wine, pepper, clove, ginger, 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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