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Ripe Tomato Soy

A pickled tomato relish made with vinegar, salt, spices, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Ripe Tomato Soy

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Combine tomatoes, onions, and salt in a bowl and let them stand for 24 hours.

  2. Drain off all the liquid.

Cook and seal

  1. Add vinegar, ground mustard, ginger, cloves, allspice, and cayenne pepper.

  2. Stew the mixture slowly for 2 to 3 hours.

  3. When nearly done, stir in sugar and ground white mustard seed.

  4. Seal in jars.

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 + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Ginger + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Ginger + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,620 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Mustard + allspicetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,928 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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 pickle and supply the body and moisture of the relish.
Onions
Add savory bulk and sharpness that mellows during the long slow stew.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the pickle and sharpens its flavor.
Sugar
Balances the vinegar's sharpness and helps thicken the stewed mixture.
Coarse sea salt
Draws liquid out of the tomatoes and onions during the 24-hour standing step.

The step that matters

Stewing slowly after the salt rest. Salt has drawn out much of the tomato and onion liquid, so the mixture must simmer gently and long enough to reduce and thicken. Stirring in sugar near the end, rather than at the start, lets it dissolve without scorching in the thickening pan.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

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

  1. Capsicumbetter flavor fit
  2. Horseradishbetter flavor fit
  3. Shallotbetter flavor fit
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, vinegar, mustard, ginger, clove, allspice, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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