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Lemon Catsup

A lemon-flavored catsup made with horseradish, mustard, celery seed, mace, cloves, and red pepper, boiled and aged.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Horseradish and mustard 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 ↓

Lemon Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the ketchup

  1. Mix the grated horseradish with the grated lemon rind.

  2. Add salt, lemon juice, mustard seed, celery seed, mace, cloves, and red pepper.

  3. Boil the mixture for 35 minutes.

  4. Bottle the mixture while hot.

Rest and serve

  1. Let it sit for 5 to 6 weeks before serving with fish.

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. Horseradish + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Mustard + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Lemon + celerytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  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

Lemon juice
Provides the sharp acidity that defines the ketchup's flavour and helps preserve it.
Lemon rind
Adds aromatic oils from the peel, giving fragrance beyond the juice's sourness.
Horseradish
Contributes pungent heat that mellows during boiling and resting.
White mustard seed
Adds a sharp, slightly bitter pungency that complements the acidity.

The step that matters

Let it sit for 5 to 6 weeks. The flavours need time to meld and mellow; the sharp horseradish and acidity soften and blend as the condiment matures. Serving it too early gives a harsh, unbalanced taste.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (horseradish, lemon, mustard, celery, clove, pepper):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Dillfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against horseradish, lemon, mustard, celery, clove, 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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