Skip to main content
Main

Bottled Tomatas, or Tomata Catsup

A preserved tomato sauce made by boiling tomatoes, capsicums, and shallots with salt, then bottling the hot mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Tomato and capsicum match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,520 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Bottled Tomatas, or Tomata Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Cut the tomatoes into quarters and sprinkle with salt.

  2. Let sit overnight.

  3. Drain the juice through a fine sieve into a saucepan.

Cook the ketchup

  1. Boil the juice for 30 minutes with the capsicums and shallots.

  2. Strain the tomatoes to pulp and add to the boiling mixture.

  3. Boil everything together for another 30 minutes.

Bottle and seal

  1. Prepare clean, warm wide-necked bottles and fill them with the hot catsup.

  2. Cork the bottles and dip the necks in melted resin or cement.

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. Tomato + capsicumtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,520 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Capsicum + shallottop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,984 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Tomato + shallottop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together583 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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 acidity of the ketchup.
Coarse sea salt
Draws juice out of the tomatoes and helps preserve the mixture.
Small capsicums
Add vegetable flavour and body to the simmered sauce.
Eschalots (shallots)
Add mild onion-like aroma and savoury depth to the sauce.

The step that matters

Boil the juice before adding the tomato pulp. Boiling the drained juice first with the capsicums and shallots concentrates it and builds flavour before the pulp is added. Keeping the mixture at a full boil for the full time reduces its water content and helps it thicken and keep.

Swap the shallot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, capsicum):

  1. Eggplantfits better
  2. Okrafits better
  3. Cucumberfits better
  4. Shallotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, capsicum. 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 Tomato SoupCream of Tomato Soup107 recipesTomato BisqueTomato Bisque61 recipesCream Tomato SoupCream Tomato Soup28 recipes