Skip to main content
Main

Tomato Catsup

A sweet and spicy tomato sauce made by cooking tomatoes with salt, sugar, spices, vinegar, and onions.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Tomato Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Cook the tomatoes with a sprinkle of coarse sea salt until thoroughly done.

  2. Press the cooked tomatoes through a potato masher to remove seeds and pulp, leaving only the skins.

Make the ketchup

  1. Add brown sugar, mustard seed, celery seed, ground spice, cayenne pepper, black pepper, cloves, mace, cinnamon, vinegar, and chopped onions. Stir everything together.

  2. Cook for 4 hours, stirring constantly.

Bottle

  1. Bottle and seal with paraffin wax.

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 + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Mustard + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Tomato + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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, pulp and flavour base of the ketchup.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and helps thicken the sauce as it cooks down.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and helps preserve the ketchup.
Onions
Add savoury depth and aroma to the sauce.

The step that matters

Long, constant stirring over 4 hours. Sugar-rich tomato mixtures scorch easily on the bottom of the pan, and the sauce thickens as water evaporates. Constant stirring prevents burning and gives an even texture.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, sugar, mustard, celery, pepper, clove, cinnamon. 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.

More tomato ketchup recipes

Green 26 See all 523 →

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesCream of Tomato SoupCream of Tomato Soup107 recipesTomato BisqueTomato Bisque61 recipes