Skip to main content
Main

Tomato Catsup

A preserved tomato condiment made with tomatoes, spices, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Clove and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Tomato Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Scald the ripe tomatoes and remove their skins.

  2. Cover the tomatoes with coarse sea salt and let them stand for a day.

  3. Strain the tomatoes thoroughly to remove the seeds.

Make the ketchup

  1. For every quart of tomatoes, add 3 ounces of cloves, 2 ounces of black pepper, 2 nutmegs, a little cayenne pepper, and a little salt.

  2. Boil the mixture for half an hour, then let it cool and settle.

  3. Add 1 pint of best cider vinegar.

  4. Bottle, cork, and seal tightly, then keep in a cool place.

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 + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Cider + vinegartop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,431 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

  4. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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, pulp and flavor of the ketchup.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the tomatoes and helps draw off juices before straining.
Cloves
Add warm, pungent aroma that gives the ketchup its spiced character.
Black pepper
Adds sharp, pungent heat and aroma to the spiced base.
Best cider vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and helps preserve the ketchup.

The step that matters

Straining the tomatoes thoroughly. Seeds and fibrous pulp left behind make the ketchup gritty and uneven in texture. Thorough straining gives a smooth, pourable result.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (clove, pepper, nutmeg, cider, vinegar):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against clove, pepper, nutmeg, cider, vinegar. 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.

More tomato ketchup recipes

Green 26 See all 523 →

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesCream of Tomato SoupCream of Tomato Soup107 recipesTomato BisqueTomato Bisque61 recipesCream Tomato SoupCream Tomato Soup28 recipes