Skip to main content
Sauce

Spiced Tomato Catsup

A thick, spiced tomato sauce made with tomatoes, onions, peach tree leaves, sugar, spices, and Tabasco or cayenne.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Spiced Tomato Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the ketchup

  1. Cook unpeeled tomatoes, onions, and peach tree leaves together until mushy.

  2. Run the mixture through a sieve into a granite kettle.

  3. Add sugar to the tomato mixture.

  4. Tie all other ingredients in a cheesecloth bag and cook with the mixture until desired consistency.

Bottle

  1. Bottle and seal airtight.

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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Cinnamon + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Red tomatoes
Form the main body of the ketchup and provide its base flavor and liquid.
Onions
Add savory sweetness and body as they cook down into the mixture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the acidity of the tomatoes.
Cloves
Contribute warm, aromatic spice notes in small amounts.
Mustard seed
Adds a sharp, pungent flavor that carries through the cooked sauce.

The step that matters

Cook until desired consistency. Tomatoes thicken as water evaporates during simmering, so the cook must judge thickness by eye. Stopping too early leaves a thin sauce, while cooking too long concentrates sugars and can scorch the bottom of the kettle.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, peach, sugar, cinnamon, clove, nutmeg, ginger):

  1. Sweet potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, peach, sugar, cinnamon, clove, nutmeg, ginger. 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.

You might also like

Ginger SauceGinger Sauce12 recipesMixed MustardMixed Mustard9 recipesWine Sauce (for stewed fruit)Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)186 recipesCaper SauceCaper Sauce180 recipes