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Tomato Ketchup

A sweet and spicy tomato ketchup made with tomatoes, spices, sugar, cinnamon, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Tomato Ketchup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Wash the tomatoes, then stew and strain them.

Make the ketchup

  1. Add the cayenne, ginger, cloves, brown sugar, cinnamon, and vinegar to the strained tomatoes.

  2. Simmer the mixture slowly for 3 to 4 hours.

  3. Once done, bottle the ketchup.

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. Ginger + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Ginger + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

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 flavour that the ketchup is built on.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the sharpness of the vinegar.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens flavour and helps preserve the finished ketchup.
Cinnamon
Adds warm aroma and spice flavour to the sauce.
Cloves
Adds pungent aroma and spice flavour to the sauce.

The step that matters

Simmer the mixture slowly for 3 to 4 hours. Long, gentle simmering evaporates water and concentrates the tomato solids, so the sauce thickens and the spices blend. Too much heat can scorch the sugars and sticking solids on the base of the pan.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, ginger, clove, sugar, cinnamon, vinegar. 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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