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Sauce

Tomato Mustard

A tomato-based mustard condiment made by boiling tomatoes, onions, peppers, spices, and vinegar, then blending with sugar and mustard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Tomato Mustard

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Chop the tomatoes, onions, and red peppers.

  2. Combine the chopped vegetables with cloves, black pepper, ginger, and coarse sea salt in a pot.

  3. Boil for 2 hours, then strain the mixture.

Finish and bottle

  1. Stir the brown sugar and mustard into the cider vinegar.

  2. Add the vinegar mixture to the strained vegetables.

  3. Boil for an additional 2 hours and then bottle.

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Ripe tomatoes
Provide the main body and bulk of the relish, breaking down into a thick base.
Onions
Add savory depth and body as they soften during the long boil.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the sharpness of the vinegar.
Mustard
Contributes pungent flavor and a sharp, tangy bite.
Cider vinegar
Provides acidity that gives the condiment its tang and helps preserve it.

The step that matters

Long boil after straining. The second two-hour boil, after the vinegar mixture is added, must reduce and thicken the liquid into a spreadable condiment. Boiling too briefly leaves it thin and watery, and it may not keep well once bottled.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Horseradishfits better
  3. Broccolifits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, pepper, clove, ginger, sugar, mustard, cider. 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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