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Bottled Tomatas, Oe Tomata Catsup

A preserved tomato ketchup made by boiling tomatoes, capsicums, and shallots, then bottling the sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and capsicum match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,520 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Bottled Tomatas, Oe Tomata Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the tomatoes into quarters, sprinkle them with salt and let them sit overnight.

  2. Drain the juice through a fine sieve into a saucepan.

Make the sauce

  1. Boil the juice for 30 minutes with the capsicums and shallots.

  2. Add the pulped tomatoes and boil the mixture for another 30 minutes.

Bottle

  1. Prepare clean, warm, necked bottles and fill them with the hot catsup.

  2. Cork the bottles and dip the necks in melted resin or cement.

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. Tomato + capsicumtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,520 recipes

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

  2. Capsicum + shallottop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,984 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Tomato + shallottop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together583 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes
Form the bulk of the sauce, supplying moisture, body and the main tomato flavour as they cook down.
Shallots
Add savoury aroma and a mild sweetness as they soften in the simmering juice.
Capsicums
Contribute sweet, mild pepper flavour and body to the simmered sauce.

The step that matters

Boiling the juice before adding the pulp. The first 30-minute boil concentrates the strained juice with the capsicums and shallots. Boiling too briefly leaves the sauce thin and watery, while adding the pulp too early can dilute the flavour and slow reduction.

Swap the shallot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, capsicum):

  1. Eggplantfits better
  2. Okrafits better
  3. Cucumberfits better
  4. Shallotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, capsicum. 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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