Skip to main content
Main

Lemon Catsup

A citrus-based condiment made with lemon rind, spices, sugar, horseradish, and shallot, then boiled and aged.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Mustard and turmeric match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,279 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Lemon Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Grate the rind of the lemons.

  2. Pound or grind the mustard seed, turmeric, white pepper, cloves, mace, and cayenne pepper.

  3. In a bowl, combine the grated lemon rind, ground spices, sugar, horseradish, minced shallot, lemon juice, and table salt.

  4. Let the mixture stand for 3 hours in a cool place.

Cook

  1. Boil the mixture in a porcelain kettle for 30 minutes.

Age and finish

  1. Pour into a covered china or earthen vessel.

  2. Let it stand for 2 weeks, stirring well every day.

  3. Strain the catsup.

  4. Bottle the catsup.

  5. Seal the catsup.

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. Mustard + turmerictop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,279 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Turmeric + clovetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,876 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Lemon + turmerictop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,192 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Lemons
Supplies the sourness, bright aroma and acidity from the juice and rind.
Mustard seed
Provides sharp, pungent flavour that mellows during the long standing.
Turmeric
Gives the ketchup its yellow colour and a mild earthy bitterness.
White sugar
Balances the sourness and saltiness with sweetness.
Horseradish
Adds sharp, pungent heat that clears the nose.
Shallot
Adds a mild savoury onion aroma.

The step that matters

Stirring daily during the 2-week stand. Stirring each day distributes the salt, sugar, spices and acid evenly through the mixture, so the flavours blend and mature uniformly instead of separating or tasting uneven. Keeping the vessel covered limits contact with air during this long rest.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lemon, mustard, turmeric, clove, mace, pepper, sugar):

  1. Cardamomfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Cinnamonfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, mustard, turmeric, clove, mace, pepper, 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.

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesHorseradish SauceHorseradish Sauce17 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipes