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Sauce

Grape Catsup

A sweet and spicy grape sauce made by cooking grape pulp with sugar, vinegar, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

Grape Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pulp

  1. Strain and mash the grapes in a kettle with enough water to prevent scorching.

  2. Cook until tender, then mash through a sieve to remove skin and seeds.

  3. Measure the pulp; for every 3 pints, add 1 pound of brown sugar, 1 cup of vinegar, and a heaping teaspoon each of cinnamon, allspice, and mace.

  4. Add ½ teaspoon of cloves, and season with coarse sea salt and black pepper to taste.

Cook and bottle

  1. Cook slowly until the mixture reduces to less than half and becomes very thick.

  2. Pour into large-mouth bottles and seal closely.

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. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. 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 pulp, flavour and natural pectin that thickens the ketchup.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and helps the ketchup darken and thicken as it cooks.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and helps preserve the ketchup.
Cinnamon
Adds warm, aromatic spice flavour.

The step that matters

Cook slowly until very thick. Reducing the pulp well below half concentrates sugar and acid and drives off water, which is what makes the ketchup thick and stable. Cooking too briefly leaves it thin and more prone to spoiling, while cooking too hard can scorch the sugars on the bottom of the kettle.

Swap the mace

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

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

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