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Sauce

Gooseberry Catsup

A sweet and tart sauce made from gooseberries, sugar, vinegar, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove 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 ↓

Gooseberry Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Select nearly ripe gooseberries, remove blossoms, and wash them.

  2. Mash the gooseberries in a porcelain kettle.

  3. Scald the mashed gooseberries and strain through a colander.

Make and bottle the ketchup

  1. Add sugar and spices to the strained mixture.

  2. Boil for 15 minutes, then add cold vinegar.

  3. Bottle the catsup immediately.

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. Cinnamon + clovetop 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. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Vinegar + allspicetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,548 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Gooseberries
Provide the bulk, pectin and tart flavor that form the body of the ketchup.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps preserve the ketchup and thicken it as it cooks.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavor and helps preserve the ketchup.
Cinnamon
Adds warm, sweet spice aroma to the ketchup.
Cloves
Adds pungent, warm spice aroma to the ketchup.
Allspice
Adds mixed warm spice flavor to the ketchup.

The step that matters

Adding the cold vinegar after boiling. Vinegar is added off the heat after the 15-minute boil so its sharp acidity and aroma are not cooked off. Adding it cold also stops the mixture from cooling down too slowly while it is being bottled.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Clovethe original
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Gingerfits less well
  4. Cardamomfits less well

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