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Spanish Catsup

A fermented green vegetable ketchup made with cucumbers, cabbage, onions, tomatoes, beans, corn, spices, sugar, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 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 ↓

Spanish Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Peel and cut the cucumbers, then sprinkle them with coarse sea salt and let them stand for 6 hours.

  2. Press the water from the cucumbers, then scald them in vinegar.

  3. Peel and cut the cabbage, then sprinkle it with coarse sea salt and let it stand for 6 hours.

  4. Chop the onions and let them stand in boiling water for 30 minutes.

  5. Chop the green tomatoes, green beans, and corn, then scald the chopped vegetables.

  6. Drain the scalded vegetables.

Combine and cover

  1. Mix the horseradish, ground mustard, mustard seed, turmeric, mace, celery seed, cinnamon, cayenne pepper, olive oil, and sugar in a jar with the prepared vegetables.

  2. Cover with boiling vinegar.

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. Cucumber + horseradishtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together640 recipes

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

  3. Cabbage + horseradishtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together481 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Cucumber + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,281 recipes

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

  5. Cabbage + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,645 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

Cucumbers
Give the pickle its main crunchy vegetable texture after salting and pressing.
Cabbage
Adds bulk and crisp texture, and salting draws out water so it stays firm.
White mustard seed
Provides sharp, pungent flavor that mellows during the pickling process.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar and spices.
Green tomatoes
Contribute tart body and bulk to the mixed vegetable pickle.
Olive oil
Adds fat that carries spice flavors through the pickle.

The step that matters

Salting the cucumbers and cabbage. Salt draws water out of the vegetables by osmosis, so they stay crisp rather than soft. Pressing out the released water before scalding removes excess liquid that would otherwise dilute the pickle and weaken its texture.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, cabbage, tomato, green beans, corn, horseradish, mustard):

  1. Lettucefits better
  2. Broccolifits better
  3. Cauliflowerfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, cabbage, tomato, green beans, corn, horseradish, mustard. 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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