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Bottled Tomatas, Ob Tomata Catsup

A homemade tomato ketchup made by boiling tomatoes, capsicums, shallots, and salt, then bottling the sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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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, Ob Tomata Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Cut the tomatoes into quarters.

  2. Lay the quartered tomatoes on dishes.

  3. Sprinkle the salt over the tomatoes.

  4. Let the tomatoes sit overnight.

Cook the ketchup

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

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

  3. Add the pulped tomatoes.

  4. Boil the mixture for another 30 minutes.

Bottle and seal

  1. Prepare clean bottles by warming them by the fire.

  2. Fill the bottles with the hot catsup.

  3. Cork the bottles.

  4. Seal the bottles immediately.

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

Tomatoes
Provide the pulp and juice that form the body and main flavour of the ketchup.
Sea salt
Draws juice out of the tomatoes overnight and seasons the sauce.
Capsicums
Add savoury flavour and body as they simmer in the reduced juice.
Shallots
Contribute aromatic, mildly sweet onion flavour during the long simmer.

The step that matters

Seal the bottles immediately after filling. The ketchup must be hot when filled. As it cools in a sealed bottle, the contents contract and form a partial vacuum, which helps keep it from spoiling.

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.

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