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Raw Catsup

A raw tomato ketchup made by layering tomatoes with salt, seasoning, sugar, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove 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 ↓

Raw Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Peel and slice the tomatoes.

  2. Layer the tomatoes with salt in a bowl and let them stand overnight.

  3. Drain off the juice and chop the tomatoes finely.

Season and bottle

  1. Add the black pepper, cinnamon, cloves, cayenne pepper, brown sugar, and vinegar.

  2. Mix well and bottle for use.

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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Pepper + clovetop 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 + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,890 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  5. Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Cinnamon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes
Form the bulk of the ketchup, providing its body, flavor, and most of its liquid.
Salt
Draws water out of the tomatoes through osmosis, firming the pulp before the juice is drained.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar and tomatoes.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavor and helps keep the ketchup stable in storage.

The step that matters

Drain off the juice. Salting draws liquid from the tomatoes, and any juice left behind thins the ketchup and dilutes its flavor. Draining well helps the final sauce stay thick and concentrated.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Tomatothe original

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