No. 633

Tomato Catsup

Catsup de Tomates

Boil one quart of vinegar in a saucepan, adding a quarter of an ounce of capsicum peppers, one ounce of garlic, half an ounce of shallot, all nicely peeled, and half an ounce of white ground pepper, also a coffeespoonful of red pepper, and let boil for ten minutes, then strain through a fine sieve. Mix in with this vinegar, one and a half pounds of tomatoes, reduce all together and then add the juice of three lemons, and salt to taste. Should this sauce be too thick, add more vinegar or some water; fill up the bottles, let stand till cold, then put them in a very cool place to use when needed. This sauce is excellent as a relish for cold meats fish, oysters, etc.

← No. 632 Tartar Sauce, English Style Cold Sauces No. 634 Vinegar Sauce with Fine Herbs →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer's catsup is a vinegar sauce first and a tomato sauce second: no sugar, no long boil, and a heat level closer to a pepper vinegar than to bottled ketchup. Expect something thin, sharp and pourable.

The hinge: reduce, then judge the consistencyNo time is given because the endpoint is visual. Simmer the strained vinegar and tomatoes uncovered until the mixture just coats a spoon, then slacken with vinegar or water as the recipe says. Overreduce and the vinegar turns harsh as it concentrates.
Capsicum peppersA quarter ounce (about 7 g) of hot chiles. The recipe does not say whether they are fresh or dried; small dried red pods are the likeliest reading, and a few dried cayenne or chile de arbol are a reasonable substitute. The additional "coffeespoonful of red pepper" is most likely ground cayenne.
CoffeespoonRoughly half a modern teaspoon, not a full one. Combined with the whole chiles this still makes a distinctly hot sauce.
Garlic and shallot by weightOne ounce of peeled garlic is about 6 to 8 average cloves; half an ounce of shallot is one small shallot. They are boiled in the vinegar and then strained out, so their job is infusion rather than body.
The tomatoesA pound and a half of ripe fresh tomatoes, roughly chopped. Canned whole tomatoes, drained, work and give a more consistent result out of season. Pass the finished sauce through a sieve if you want it smooth; Ranhofer only sieves the spiced vinegar.
Bottling and storage"A very cool place" meant an icebox or a cold cellar. This is a fresh refrigerator condiment, not a shelf-stable preserve: bottle it, chill it, and use it within a few weeks. If you want a pantry-stable version, follow a current tested water-bath canning recipe with a verified acidity.
YieldHard to pin down, since neither the extent of the reduction nor the amount of vinegar or water added back is specified; somewhere near a quart is a fair working estimate.
How to use itRanhofer means it as a table relish for cold meat, fish and oysters, in the manner of a mignonette or a hot sauce. Serve it in small quantity; it is far more acidic than the ketchup most people expect.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer ran the kitchens at Delmonico's in New York, and The Epicurean (1894) is his attempt to set down the whole of that restaurant's repertoire, French method and American ingredients together. That is why this sits in the cold sauces chapter alongside tartar sauce and herbed vinegars rather than in a preserving section: it is a service condiment, made in restaurant quantity and kept on ice, not a summer put-up. The word catsup is generally traced to the Hokkien ke-tsiap, a fermented fish brine that reached English through Southeast Asian trade, and for most of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries English "catsup" meant a thin, dark, sharply seasoned liquid made from mushrooms, walnuts or oysters. Tomato versions became common in America in the early nineteenth century, and bottled tomato ketchup was certainly on sale by the time Ranhofer wrote, though the heavily sweetened, thickened formula now taken as standard was settled somewhat later. His recipe, with no sugar at all and a quart of spiced vinegar carrying a pound and a half of fruit, belongs firmly to the older tradition.