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Lemon Catsup

A preserved lemon-based catsup made with horseradish, mustard seed, celery seed, mace, cloves, and red pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Horseradish and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,832 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Lemon Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mix the grated horseradish and lemon rind in a bowl.

  2. Add salt, lemon juice, mustard seed, celery seed, mace, cloves, and red pepper.

Cook and bottle

  1. Boil the mixture for 35 minutes.

  2. Bottle the catsup while hot.

Rest and serve

  1. Let it sit for five to six weeks before serving with fish.

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. Horseradish + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Mustard + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Lemon + celerytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Lemon juice
Provides acidity that sharpens flavor and helps preserve the ketchup.
Lemon rind
Adds aromatic oils that give the ketchup its bright lemon fragrance.
White mustard seed
Contributes pungent, sharp flavor that deepens during the long resting period.
Salt
Seasons the mixture and helps preserve it.

The step that matters

Boil the mixture for 35 minutes. Boiling concentrates the flavors and reduces the liquid, while thoroughly heating the mixture helps it keep well in bottles. Cutting the boil short may leave the flavors raw and the ketchup less stable.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (horseradish, lemon, mustard, celery, clove, pepper):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Dillfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against horseradish, lemon, mustard, celery, 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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