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Sauce

Cold Catsup

A cold tomato sauce made with green tomatoes, onions, peppers, spices, brown sugar, and cider vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and clove 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 ↓

Cold Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash and slice the green tomatoes, then salt them and let them stand for 12 hours.

  2. In a large bowl, layer the tomatoes, onions, and green peppers alternately with the pulverized spices until the bowl is full.

Cook

  1. Cover the mixture with best cider vinegar.

  2. Let it simmer for 30 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. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Ginger + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Allspice + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,620 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

Green tomatoes
Form the bulk of the ketchup and give it its body and tart flavor.
Onions
Add savory sweetness and soften into the mixture as it cooks.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and a deeper, molasses-like flavor.
Cider vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens flavor and helps preserve the mixture.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Turmericfits better
  3. Cinnamonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, onion, pepper, allspice, mustard, ginger, clove. 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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