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Tomato Mustard

A tomato-based mustard condiment made by boiling tomatoes, seasoning, and adding vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Tomato Mustard

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Cut the tomatoes and place them in a large pot.

  2. Boil the tomatoes until soft.

  3. Rub the cooked tomatoes through a sieve to remove skins and seeds.

  4. Return the pulp to the pot and boil until thick.

Season and finish

  1. Add cayenne pepper, white pepper, ground cloves, mustard, and salt.

  2. Boil the mixture for a few minutes.

  3. Stir in the vinegar.

  4. Once cool, bottle and cork tightly.

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. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Clove + mustardtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,829 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 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

Tomatoes
Form the bulk of the sauce and, once boiled down, give it body and thickness.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and helps preserve the finished condiment.
Mustard
Adds sharp, pungent flavour that balances the sweetness of the tomatoes.

The step that matters

Boiling the pulp until thick. Tomato pulp contains a lot of water, so it must be reduced long enough to reach a thick consistency. Stopping early leaves a thin condiment that is more likely to spoil in the bottle.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, pepper, clove, mustard, vinegar):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, pepper, clove, mustard, vinegar. 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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