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Tomato Catsup

A thick tomato sauce made by boiling tomatoes with onions, spices, vinegar, sugar, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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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. Pour 3 pints of water over 1 bushel of tomatoes.

  2. Add 10-12 finely chopped onions and boil until soft.

  3. Strain the mixture through a wire sieve.

Season and cook

  1. Add ½ gallon of vinegar, 2 ounces of ground spice, 2 ounces of ground black pepper, 2 ounces of mustard, 1 ounce of ground cloves, 2 ounces of grated nutmeg, 2 pounds of light brown sugar, and 1 pint of salt, then mix well.

  2. Boil for 2 hours.

  3. Add a little cayenne pepper if desired.

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. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

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

  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

Tomatoes
Form the base of the sauce and provide most of its body and flavour.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens flavour and helps preserve the ketchup.
Light brown sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the acidity of the vinegar and tomatoes.
Onions
Add savoury depth and body as they soften during boiling.

The step that matters

Boil for 2 hours. Long simmering evaporates water and thickens the mixture while mellowing the sharp vinegar and raw spice flavours. Stopping early leaves the ketchup thin and harsh-tasting.

Swap the tomato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, vinegar, pepper, mustard, clove, nutmeg, sugar. 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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