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Boiled Tomato Catsup

A boiled tomato sauce seasoned with pepper, cloves, allspice, mustard, nutmeg, salt, sugar, vinegar, and cayenne pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Boiled Tomato Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil the tomatoes until soft, then strain through a sieve.

  2. Put the pulp in a kettle and boil until very thick.

  3. Once thickened, add black pepper, ground cloves, allspice, mustard, nutmeg, coarse sea salt, sugar, vinegar, and cayenne pepper.

  4. Stir well and continue to boil for a few 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. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Allspice + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,928 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes
Form the main body and bulk of the sauce once boiled down and strained.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the sharpness of the vinegar.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that gives ketchup its tang and helps preserve it.
Mustard
Adds sharp, pungent flavor that complements the spices.

The step that matters

Boil the pulp until very thick. Long boiling evaporates water and concentrates the tomato solids, so the ketchup thickens. Stopping early leaves a thin, watery sauce that may separate or spoil sooner.

Swap the tomato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, clove, allspice, mustard, nutmeg, 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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