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Salad

Cold Catsup

A cold tomato-based sauce with celery, peppers, mustard, horseradish, and spices, preserved in jars.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and horseradish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,832 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Cold Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Chop ripe tomatoes and onions.

  2. Sprinkle with salt.

  3. Let stand for 2 hours.

  4. Chop celery, red peppers, and nasturtium seeds finely.

  5. Grate the horseradish.

Mix and seal

  1. Mix chopped vegetables with salt, spices, sugar, and vinegar.

  2. Drain tomatoes and onions.

  3. Mix thoroughly with the other ingredients.

  4. Seal in jars.

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. Mustard + horseradishtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Celery + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Tomato + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Mustard + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes
Provide the main body, moisture and tomato flavor of the ketchup.
Onions
Add savory aroma and bulk to the chopped vegetable base.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens flavor and helps keep the ketchup stable.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar and horseradish.
White mustard seed
Adds a pungent, slightly bitter bite to the sauce.
Horseradish
Contributes a sharp, pungent heat that fades with time.

The step that matters

Drain tomatoes and onions. Salt draws water out of the chopped vegetables. Draining them before mixing removes this liquid so the ketchup stays thick rather than thin and watery.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, celery, mustard, pepper, horseradish, cinnamon, sugar):

  1. Lettucefits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Broccolifits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, celery, mustard, pepper, horseradish, cinnamon, 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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