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Sauce

Tomato Catsup

A preserved tomato sauce made with tomatoes, cloves, pepper, nutmeg, cayenne, salt, and cider vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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. Scald the ripe tomatoes and remove their skins.

  2. Cover the tomatoes with salt and let them stand for one day.

  3. Strain the tomatoes thoroughly to remove the seeds.

Cook and bottle

  1. In a pot, combine the strained tomatoes with cloves, black pepper, nutmegs, cayenne pepper, and salt.

  2. Boil the mixture for 30 minutes, then let it cool and settle.

  3. Add the cider vinegar, then bottle, cork, and seal tightly.

  4. Store the catsup in a cool place.

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. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Cider + vinegartop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,431 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

  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

Ripe tomatoes
Provide the main body, pulp and flavour of the ketchup.
Cider vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and helps preserve the ketchup.
Cloves
Contribute warm, aromatic spice flavour.
Black pepper
Adds sharp, aromatic spice heat to the sauce.
Nutmegs
Add warm, aromatic spice flavour.

The step that matters

Straining the tomatoes thoroughly. Seeds left in the pulp would make the ketchup gritty and bitter. Thorough straining leaves a smooth, even texture that the long boil then concentrates.

Swap the tomato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against clove, pepper, nutmeg, cider, vinegar. 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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