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Sauce

Cold Catsup

A cold tomato-based sauce with horseradish, mustard, pepper, and spices, sweetened with sugar and preserved in vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Horseradish and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,832 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Cold Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the tomatoes and horseradish finely.

  2. Combine all ingredients in a large bowl and mix thoroughly until well combined.

Bottle

  1. Bottle the mixture without cooking.

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. Horseradish + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  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. Pepper + celerytop 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, moisture and acidity of the sauce.
Horseradish
Adds sharp pungency that gives the sauce its bite.
Mustard seed
Adds pungency and a sharp, sour-spiced flavour when raw.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the uncooked sauce its tang and helps preserve it.
Red peppers
Contribute sweetness, colour and fresh vegetable texture.
Onions
Add savoury flavour and aromatic body to the sauce.

The step that matters

Bottle the mixture without cooking. Because the sauce is never heated, its safety and keeping depend entirely on acidity and salt. Raw ingredients must be well chopped and thoroughly combined so the vinegar and salt are evenly distributed through the mixture before bottling.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, horseradish, mustard, pepper, celery, onion, clove. 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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