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Tomato Soy

A fermented tomato sauce made with tomatoes, onions, spices, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Tomato Soy

Ingredients

Directions

Salt the tomatoes

  1. Sprinkle the bottom of a large tub with salt.

  2. Layer the sliced tomatoes in the tub, sprinkling salt and sliced onions between each 2-inch layer.

  3. Let the tomatoes sit for three days.

Cook and strain

  1. Transfer the mixture to a large pot and boil from morning until night, stirring constantly.

  2. The next morning, pass the mixture through a sieve, pressing to extract all the liquid.

  3. Add cloves, allspice, black pepper, and cayenne to the liquid.

  4. Boil the mixture slowly all day.

Cool and bottle

  1. In the evening, transfer to a suitable vessel to cool.

  2. The next day, bottle and cork it well.

  3. Store in a cool place during warm weather.

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Allspice + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

  5. Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 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

Ripe tomatoes
Provide the main body and liquid that becomes the sauce.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the tomatoes and onions, and preserves the mixture.
Onions
Add savory depth and sweetness to the sauce as it cooks down.
Cloves
Add warm, aromatic spice flavor to the liquid.
Allspice
Adds warm, aromatic spice flavor to the liquid.
Cayenne pepper
Adds heat to the sauce.

The step that matters

Boil the mixture slowly all day. Long, gentle boiling thickens the liquid by evaporation and concentrates the flavors. Too little heat leaves the sauce thin, and too rough a boil can scorch it on the pot bottom.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Eggplantfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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