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Tomato Catsup

A sauce made from boiled tomatoes, vinegar, salt, cloves, cayenne pepper, and black pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and garlic are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,076 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Tomato Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil the tomatoes until soft.

  2. Squeeze the tomatoes through a sieve.

  3. Add vinegar, coarse sea salt, whole cloves, ground cayenne pepper, and black pepper to the tomato puree.

  4. Mix all ingredients together and boil for three hours.

  5. Bottle the catsup without straining.

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 + garlictop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,076 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

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

  4. Pepper + garlictop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,090 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Clove + garlictop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,368 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes
Provide the bulk of the puree, giving the ketchup its body, color, and tomato flavor.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavor and helps preserve the finished sauce.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the sauce and draws out flavor from the tomatoes.
Whole cloves
Contribute warm, aromatic spice notes during the long simmer.
Ground cayenne pepper
Adds heat and a sharp pungent note to the sauce.

The step that matters

Boil for three hours. The long simmer evaporates water and thickens the puree into a spreadable sauce. Stopping early leaves it thin and watery, while the acid from the vinegar keeps the cooked sauce stable.

Swap the garlic

The recipe marks garlic as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, vinegar, clove, pepper):

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Basilfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Garlicthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, vinegar, clove, 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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