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Sauce

Cold Catsup

A cold tomato-based sauce made with tomatoes, peppers, onions, sugar, salt, mustard seed, cinnamon, horseradish, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and horseradish 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 ↓

Cold Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Chop the tomatoes, red peppers, onions, and horseradish finely.

  2. Drain the chopped vegetables repeatedly to remove excess liquid.

Combine and seal

  1. Mix all ingredients together well.

  2. Seal the mixture in a jar.

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. Mustard + horseradishtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

  3. Cinnamon + horseradishtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together515 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Onion + horseradishtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,784 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Mustard + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,581 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes
Provide moisture and body, forming the base of the sauce.
Onions
Add savoury aroma and depth as the sauce cooks down.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar.
Cider vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens flavour and helps keep the sauce stable.
White mustard seed
Adds a sharp, pungent flavour that gives the ketchup its bite.
Horseradish
Adds a sharp, aromatic heat that lifts the overall flavour.

The step that matters

Drain the chopped vegetables repeatedly. Excess water dilutes the flavour and makes the ketchup thin and watery. Removing liquid concentrates the vegetables' taste and gives a thicker sauce that keeps better in the jar.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, pepper, sugar, mustard, cinnamon, horseradish, cider):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, pepper, sugar, mustard, cinnamon, horseradish, cider. 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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