What is the one desire of all of mankind? It’s to obviously know what condiment is the best. Now your preferences on what condiment pairs with what is obviously subjective, and up to your own decision. In this blog post I may say a condiment is good and you think it’s horrible, and vice versa. However, I am going to create a unified way of ranking condiments, so it is less subjective.

I came up with these ranking values on the 26th of May.

CRI (Condiment Ranking Index)

The condiment ranking index will aim to rate condiments on their: Flavour, Powerfulness, Repetitiveness, Pair-ability, Consistency, Viscosity, Ingredients, Preservatives, Viability.

Below I will explain what each of these rankings mean. I came up with these last night with my friend.

Flavour

This is how good of a flavour it is. This is probably one of the most subjective of the rankings as you may think the flavour is bad or good. In the future, we could expand this into being a flavour complex so different elements of flavour are ranked instead of the overall flavour. This could make it less subjective. But I feel like flavour is one of the more explanatory rankings.

Powerfulness

At first you might question what this means. However, I believe that a good condiment should add to a dish. It should add to the flavour profile. It shouldn’t be that powerful it’s all you can taste, like tomato ketchup for example. A higher powerful rating means that it has a stronger taste. A 10 would be it is all that you can taste, and a 1 is that you cannot taste it at all.

Repetitiveness

This is on does the flavour feel old after using it too much. If it gets a bit boring a bland after using it a bit then it gets a higher repetitiveness rating. A 1 is that it would could be used forever and you never get bored of it. A 10 is that it gets old fast then you can’t use it for a month again. Again this is one of the more subjective ratings, but hopefully most people can agree on this.

Pair-ability

This is how well it can match with different foods. The more food it can go with the higher ranking it can get. Most condiments can go with anything so at the end of the day this will come down to morality.

Consistency

Similar to repetitiveness, does the sauce always hit the same. Does it always hit the same taste buds? This can be expanded to do all brands create the same similar flavour. Does it hit the same no matter what brand you get, and does it taste the same no matter what brand you get?

Viscosity

I doubt this needs any real explanation. This can be expanded to texture profile in the future.

Ingredients

This one needs a little explanation. This rating is dependant on flavour. A higher ingredient ranking would mean that it has a simple ingredient list and a good flavour at the same time. A lower ranking would mean it has a complex ingredient list, it can have a good flavour, or a bad flavour here. You should find that a higher ranking would be something just like sugar, tomato, and honey for a simple tomato ketchup. On the other hand, at a lower ranking you’d find it would have stupid chemicals that no one knows what they are such as the E’s.

Preservatives

How many preservatives does the condiment have. The more it has the worse it is because that means the condiment is worse for you.

Viability

This is how morally acceptable it is to use the condiment. These seems random but I think this is useful for keeping it less subjective and more fit to the wider demographics of people.

A little further explanation

We will strictly be ranking UK condiments to keep it fair and be using Heinz, and Crucials condiments as a baseline. Heinz and crucials are the biggest condiment companies in the UK, so I think it is best.

Example One : Tomato Ketchup

We will now rank two different condiments with the CR Index to see how good it is. I think a good one to do is tomato ketchup as this is probably universally used.

To reiterate, the rankings will be subjective, but the CR Index will aim to make it more justifiable, and less subjective.

Tomato Ketchup

Flavour: 6 - Tomato Ketchup Is Good. However, I feel like if you use it past the age of six then your trapped as a child. Powerfulness 8.5 - I find Tomato Ketchup tends to overpower the flavour of the dish and is usually all what you can taste. Repetitiveness 7-8 - I feel like tomato ketchup gets old fast especially when it’s all you use. Pair-ability: 8 - Tomato ketchup can almost go with anything Consistency: 7 Viscosity: 6.5 Ingredients: 6 - It can be made at home with just sugar tomatoes and honey, but some companies do over complicate it with preservatives Preservatives: 7 Viability: 6 - People won’t look at you if you just have it, but when it is all that you have then people will start to look at you wrong.

Summary: Overall, tomato ketchup is a good condiment however it does become repetitive when it’s all you use, and can sometimes take away from a dish when you use quite a bit of it and aren’t sparing with it.

Example Two : BBQ Sauce

I feel BBQ sauce is another good one to rank because I feel like there isn’t one definite BBQ flavour, every company does their own different BBQ sauce which would make it difficult to rank.

BBQ Sauce

Flavour: 8 - Any BBQ sauce will always hit the spot. If we take it outside the context of Heinz and Crucials just for a moment. Powerfulness: 7 - BBQ sauce tends to have a strong flavour however I don’t feel as if it takes away from a flavour profile in the same way that tomato does. In some cases yes, but most it does add. Repetitiveness: 7 - I am being subjective, but I wouldn’t want it one everything, and I feel it does get old when you aren’t sparing. Goes well with meat though. Pair-ability: 6 - BBQ sauce is nice but I wouldn’t want to have it with everything, I wouldn’t eat it with potatoes for example when if I had tomato ketchup on my potatoes I’d be more inclined towards eating them. Consistency: 4 - Most companies do a completely different BBQ flavour which is not really distinct to one flavour. But you can still tell it is BBQ Viscosity: 7 Ingredients: 4 - I find BBQ sauce tend to have lots of convoluted ingredients. If you can’t think of a good way to make it at home then lower rating. Preservatives: 7 Viability: 7

Foot notes

In the future I may create a dedicated page on my website where I will put dedicated articles for different condiments and their rankings.