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Tomato Catsup

A fermented tomato sauce with spices, sugar, salt, and vinegar, bottled after cooking.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Tomato Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pulp

  1. Cook the ripe tomatoes thoroughly and strain through a colander to remove seeds and skins.

Season and cook

  1. For each gallon of pulp, add salt, sugar, cloves, allspice, cinnamon, pepper, and chopped red peppers.

  2. Tie the whole spices in a cheesecloth bag and add to the mixture, excluding the vinegar.

  3. Cook until the mixture is almost thick, then add the vinegar and continue cooking until desired thickness.

Bottle

  1. Pour into well sterilized bottles and seal.

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. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Allspice + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Allspice + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Ripe tomatoes
Provide the main body, flavor and thick pulp that forms the ketchup.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the acidity of the tomatoes and vinegar.
Salt
Enhances the overall flavor and suppresses excess sharpness.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens flavor and helps preserve the ketchup.
Red peppers
Contribute fresh, sweet pepper flavor and body to the mixture.

The step that matters

Adding the vinegar. Vinegar is added only after the mixture is nearly thick. Adding it early slows evaporation and can leave the ketchup thinner than intended, so it should go in once the pulp has reduced.

Swap the tomato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, clove, allspice, cinnamon, pepper, 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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