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Currant Catsup

A sweet and spicy currant sauce made with sugar, vinegar, cloves, allspice, mustard, cinnamon, and cayenne pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Currant Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine currants, sugar, vinegar, ground cloves, ground allspice, mustard, cinnamon, and cayenne pepper in a large pot.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil and cook for 2 hours, 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 + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Allspice + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 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. Clove + peppertop 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

Currants
Provide the main fruit body, pectin and tartness that form the thick ketchup texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and, as it cooks down, helps thicken and preserve the ketchup.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that balances the sweetness and helps keep the sauce stable.
Ground cloves
Contribute warm, aromatic spice flavor that defines the ketchup's character.

The step that matters

Simmering for 2 hours with occasional stirring. Long gentle cooking drives off water so the sauce thickens. Stirring prevents the sugar-rich fruit from scorching on the bottom of the pot.

Swap the currant

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

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

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