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Tomato Catsup

A preserved tomato sauce made with tomatoes, vinegar, sugar, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Vinegar and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 20,806 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Tomato Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the tomato base

  1. Boil the tomatoes slowly until soft.

  2. Strain the tomatoes to extract the juice.

Cook and seal

  1. In a pot, combine the tomato juice, vinegar, sugar, and spices.

  2. Boil the mixture until it thickens.

  3. Seal the catsup 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. Vinegar + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  2. Tomato + vinegartop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,063 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Tomato + sugartop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,667 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes
Provide the main body and flavor, and their juice becomes the base of the ketchup.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the ketchup its tangy flavor and helps preserve it.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the acidity and tomato flavor.

The step that matters

Boil the mixture until it thickens. Tomato juice contains a lot of water, and the cook must reduce it long enough to reach a thick consistency. Stopping too early leaves the ketchup thin and watery.

Swap the tomato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, sugar. 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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