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Sauce

Tomato Catsup

Tomato catsup is a sweetened tomato sauce with vinegar, spices, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and mace are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,400 recipes. Both carry methyleugenol, which smells clove, spice. The science ↓

Tomato Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the base

  1. Boil the tomato juice for 1.5 to 2 hours.

  2. Add the vinegar.

  3. Bring the mixture to a scald.

Season and cool

  1. Stir in the cloves, mace, salt, and sugar.

  2. Let the mixture cool.

  3. Add the brandy.

Bottle

  1. Bottle the catsup.

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 + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  2. Tomato + clovetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  3. Brandy + clovetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,362 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  4. Vinegar + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

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

  5. Vinegar + clovetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,386 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Tomato juice
Forms the base of the sauce and gives it body and bulk.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and balances the sweetness.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that rounds out the sharpness of the vinegar and tomato.
Cloves
Contribute warm, aromatic spice notes to the sauce.
Mace
Adds a delicate, warm aroma that complements the cloves.
Brandy
Adds a rich aroma and depth of flavor to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Add the brandy after cooling. Alcohol evaporates when heated, so adding the brandy once the mixture has cooled keeps more of its aroma in the finished ketchup.

Swap the tomato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, brandy, clove, mace, 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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