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Currant Catsup

A sweet and spicy sauce made from mashed currants, vinegar, sugar, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove 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 ↓

Currant Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the currants

  1. Mash and strain the currants through a cloth.

Cook the catsup

  1. In a large pot, combine the strained currants, vinegar, sugar, cinnamon, cloves, allspice, salt, and red pepper.

  2. Boil the mixture slowly for 1 hour.

Bottle

  1. Pour the catsup into small bottles for storage.

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 + clovetop 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. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Allspice + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 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

Currants
Provide the main fruit body, tartness, and pectin that thickens the catsup as it cooks.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavor and helps preserve the catsup.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the catsup and, with the long boil, thickens it into a syrupy consistency.
Cinnamon
Contributes warm spice aroma and flavor.

The step that matters

Boil the mixture slowly for 1 hour. Slow simmering lets water evaporate gradually so the sugar and currant pectin concentrate and thicken without scorching. Boiling too hard or too briefly risks a thin, scorched, or unstable catsup.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Limefits better
  2. Orangefits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Currantthe original

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