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Sauce

Gooseberry Catsup

A sweet and tart sauce made from gooseberries, brown sugar, spices, and cider vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Gooseberry Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the blossom and stem from the gooseberries.

Cook

  1. Cook the gooseberries slowly in a porcelain kettle.

  2. Add the brown sugar a little at a time while cooking for at least two hours.

  3. Add the ground cloves, cinnamon, ginger, and cider vinegar.

  4. Cook for at least one hour longer.

  5. Put the catsup into jars while hot.

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. Cinnamon + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Clove + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Cider + vinegartop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,431 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

  5. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Gooseberries
Provide the fruit base, whose natural pectin helps the ketchup thicken as it cooks.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and a rich, molasses-like depth, and helps preserve the ketchup.
Cider vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and helps preserve the ketchup.
Ground cloves
Adds warm, aromatic spice flavor.
Ground cinnamon
Adds warm, sweet spice aroma.

The step that matters

Cook slowly while adding the sugar gradually. Cooking gently over a long period lets the fruit break down and thicken without scorching. Adding sugar little by little keeps the mixture from burning on the bottom of the kettle and lets it dissolve evenly.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Cardamomfits about as well
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, clove, cinnamon, cider, 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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