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Tomato Catsup

A sweet and tangy tomato sauce made by cooking tomatoes with vinegar, sugar, spices, and mustard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Tomato Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Bake the tomatoes until soft.

  3. Place the tomatoes in a crock, avoiding the water, and squeeze out the juice while removing the skins.

Cook and finish

  1. For every gallon of tomatoes, add the vinegar, brown sugar, salt, red peppers, black pepper, allspice, cloves, ginger, and mustard.

  2. Boil the mixture for 2 hours, stirring constantly.

  3. Strain the mixture through a sieve.

  4. Bottle the catsup when cool and seal tightly.

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. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Clove + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Allspice + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,620 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Allspice + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,928 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Pepper + clovetop 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

Tomatoes
Provide the main body, flavour and liquid base of the ketchup.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens flavour and helps preserve the finished ketchup.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and depth, balancing the acidity of the vinegar and tomatoes.
Mustard
Adds sharp, pungent flavour that rounds out the spiced sauce.

The step that matters

Boil the mixture for 2 hours, stirring constantly. Long boiling evaporates water and concentrates the tomato solids into a thick sauce. Constant stirring prevents the sugar and tomato from scorching on the bottom of the pot.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vinegar, sugar, pepper, allspice, clove, ginger, mustard):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, sugar, pepper, allspice, clove, ginger, 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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