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Ever-ready Catsup

A preserved tomato-based sauce made with vinegar, anchovies, onions, spices, and mushrooms, boiled and strained.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,038 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Ever-ready Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the ketchup

  1. Combine all ingredients in a preserving kettle.

  2. Boil slowly for four hours, or until the mixture reduces to half its original quantity.

  3. Strain through a flannel bag.

Bottle and seal

  1. Do not bottle until the next day.

  2. Fill the flasks to the top and dip the corks in beeswax and rosin.

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 + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 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. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Pepper + gingertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,800 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

Mushrooms
Adds savoury, umami depth and body as they break down during the long simmer.
Anchovies
Contribute salty, savoury depth that rounds out the sweetness and acidity.
Cider vinegar
Provides acidity that gives the ketchup its tang and helps preserve it.
Tomatoes
Supply the base fruit body, moisture and natural sweetness of the sauce.
Onions
Add aromatic sweetness and savoury background as they cook down into the sauce.

The step that matters

Boil slowly for four hours. A gentle, long simmer is needed to reduce the liquid to half and concentrate flavour. Boiling too hard can scorch the mixture on the bottom of the kettle, and stopping early leaves it too thin and less stable for storage.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Cardamomfits better
  4. Macethe original

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

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