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Tomato Catsup

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,038 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Tomato Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a large pot, combine the cooked and strained tomatoes, sugar, and vinegar.

  2. Add the ground cloves, mace, ginger, pepper, mustard, cinnamon, chopped red pepper, salt, and horseradish.

  3. Bring the mixture to a boil and cook until thick, stirring occasionally.

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 + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 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

Tomatoes
Form the bulk of the sauce and provide its base flavor and body as they cook down.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the acidity of the vinegar and tomatoes.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that brightens the flavor and helps preserve the finished sauce.
Ground cloves
Contribute warm, aromatic spice notes that define the ketchup's flavor.

The step that matters

Cooking until thick. Tomatoes thicken as water evaporates during long simmering, and stirring prevents scorching on the bottom of the pot. Stopping too early leaves the sauce thin, while overcooking makes it overly dense.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Cardamomfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, sugar, vinegar, clove, ginger, pepper, mustard. 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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