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Tomato Catsup

A homemade tomato sauce made by cooking tomatoes, seasoning, and boiling until thick, then bottling while hot.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Tomato Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Cook the tomatoes until soft.

  2. Rub the cooked tomatoes through a colander.

  3. Return the strained tomatoes to the kettle and cook until thick.

  4. Add salt, black pepper, cinnamon, ground cloves, cayenne pepper, vinegar, and sugar.

  5. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  6. Bottle the catsup 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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

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

  4. Pepper + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,890 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  5. Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Cinnamon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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 and flavor, thickening into a pulp as they cook down.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavor and helps preserve the finished ketchup.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the acidity and tartness of the tomatoes and vinegar.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the sauce and draws out flavor from the tomatoes.

The step that matters

Cook the strained tomatoes until thick. Tomato sauce thickens only as water evaporates during a long simmer. Cooking too briefly leaves a thin ketchup that may separate, while the sugar and acid added later will concentrate as the mixture reduces.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, cinnamon, clove, vinegar, sugar. 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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