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Sauce

Tomato Catsup

A preserved tomato sauce made with tomatoes, vinegar, salt, sugar, onions, spices, mustard, and oil.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Tomato Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomato juice

  1. Cut out blemishes from the tomatoes, then scald and strain them through a cloth, ensuring the pulp does not pass through.

Cook the ketchup

  1. In a preserving kettle, combine 10 pints of the tomato juice with 2 pints of vinegar, 3 tablespoons of salt, 5 tablespoons of sugar, and 1 pint of chopped onions in a muslin bag.

  2. Boil the mixture until it reduces to 1 quart or thickens like boiled custard.

  3. Just before removing from heat, stir in the spices: ground cloves, mace, allspice, cinnamon, black pepper, Cayenne pepper, and Lexington mustard.

Bottle and seal

  1. Bottle the catsup while hot, adding 1 teaspoon of salad oil to each bottle, and seal.

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 + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Allspice + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Mace + allspicetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes
Provide the bulk of the juice and the main flavour and body of the ketchup.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens flavour and helps preserve the finished ketchup.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the acidity and tomato tartness.
Chopped onions
Add savoury depth and aroma as they cook down into the sauce.
Ground cloves
Add warm, aromatic spice notes that give the ketchup its distinctive flavour.

The step that matters

Adding the spices just before removing from heat. Ground spices release their aroma quickly and lose volatile flavour compounds with prolonged boiling, so adding them late keeps the seasoning fresh and sharp.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, vinegar, sugar, onion, clove, allspice, cinnamon):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Gingerfits better
  3. Cardamomfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, vinegar, sugar, onion, clove, allspice, cinnamon. 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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