Name: Grape Catsup
Ingredients: 6 pounds of grapes; 2½ pounds of sugar; 1 tablespoon of salt; 1 tablespoon of allspice; 1 tablespoon of cloves; 1 tablespoon of black pepper; 2 sticks of cinnamon; 1 pint of vinegar

Why it works: Clove and cinnamon 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 ↓

Grape Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the puree

Cook the grapes until soft.
Run the cooked grapes through a sieve.

Make the ketchup

In a pot, combine the grape puree with sugar, salt, allspice, cloves, black pepper, cinnamon, and vinegar.
Cook the mixture for a short time until well combined.

Store

Can or bottle the catsup for storage.

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.

Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,189 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).
Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together7,874 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Allspice + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,536 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together17,451 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
Allspice + peppertop 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

Grapes: Provide the main body, sweetness and fruity flavour of the ketchup.
Sugar: Adds sweetness and, as it thickens, helps give the ketchup body and preserves it.
Vinegar: Adds acidity that balances the sweetness and helps preserve the ketchup.

Swap the grape

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

Limefits better
Orangefits better
Lemonfits better
Grapethe original

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