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Sauce

Tomato Catsup

A preserved tomato sauce made by boiling tomatoes, reducing the liquid, and adding vinegar, sugar, salt, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Tomato Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the tomato base

  1. Boil the tomatoes gently for 30 minutes.

  2. Press through a sieve to remove seeds and skins.

  3. Return the liquid to a porcelain-lined kettle and boil down to 1½ gallons.

Season and bottle

  1. Add the vinegar and boil down to 1¾ gallons.

  2. Stir in the sugar, salt, and spices until thoroughly mixed.

  3. Let it boil and bottle while hot, sealing tightly.

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

Ripe tomatoes
Provide the main body, flavour and liquid that is reduced into the ketchup.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives ketchup its sharp tang and helps preserve it.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the acidity and savoury tomato flavour.
Black pepper
Adds sharp, warm spice that gives the ketchup its savoury bite.
Allspice
Adds warm, aromatic spice notes that round out the tomato flavour.

The step that matters

Boil down to the set volumes. Reducing the tomato liquid concentrates its flavour and thickens it, and the tomato-to-vinegar ratio sets the final texture and sharpness. Stopping too early leaves it thin and watery; boiling too long makes it dense and overly sharp.

Swap the tomato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, sugar, 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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