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Sauce

Currant or Grape Catsup

A sweet, vinegar-based catsup made from currants or grapes, cloves, cinnamon, allspice, pepper, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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 ↓

Currant or Grape Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil the vinegar, sugar, currants, cloves, cinnamon, allspice, black pepper, and salt for 15 minutes.

  2. Stir the currants, then strain the mixture.

  3. Boil the strained mixture for an additional 15 minutes.

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. Clove + allspicetop 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

Currants
Provides the fruit base, and their natural pectin helps thicken the sauce as it cooks.
Sugar
Sweetens the sauce and helps it thicken and keep as water evaporates.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that balances the sweetness and helps preserve the sauce.
Ground cloves
Contributes a warm, pungent aroma and flavor.

The step that matters

Boiling the strained mixture for the additional 15 minutes. Currants contain natural pectin, and the sauce only thickens as water evaporates and sugar concentrates during the second boil. Stopping early leaves the catsup thin and less stable.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Limefits better
  2. Orangefits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Currantthe original

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