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Currant Catsup

A sweet and sour currant sauce made with currant juice, sugar, vinegar, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Currant Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine currant juice, sugar, and vinegar in a large pot.

  2. Add cinnamon, cloves, pepper, allspice, and nutmeg.

  3. Bring the mixture to a boil and cook for 20 minutes.

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 + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Allspice + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,331 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

Currant juice
Provides the fruit flavor and liquid base that the ketchup cooks down.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps preserve the ketchup by binding water.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavor and helps preserve the ketchup.
Cinnamon
Adds warm aroma and spice flavor.

The step that matters

Bring the mixture to a boil and cook for 20 minutes. The boil drives off water and concentrates the sugar and juice, which sets the ketchup's thickness. Stopping too early leaves it thin, while cooking too long or too hot can scorch the sugar and darken the flavor.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Limefits better
  2. Lemonfits better
  3. Orangefits better
  4. Currantthe original

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