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Sauce

Tomato Mustard

A sauce made from boiled tomatoes and peppers, seasoned with salt, pepper, ginger, allspice, vinegar, and ground mustard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,620 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Tomato Mustard

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the tomatoes

  1. Boil the tomatoes and red peppers until soft.

  2. Strain the mixture as you would for catsup.

Season and finish

  1. Add salt, black pepper, ginger, and allspice.

  2. Boil for 1½ hours.

  3. When cold, stir in vinegar and ground mustard.

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Allspice + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,928 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Pepper + allspicetop 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. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes
Provide the main body and bulk of the sauce, along with its fruity sweetness.
Red peppers
Add body and mild, sweet pepper flavor that blends into the tomato base.
Vinegar
Adds sharpness that balances the sweetness and richness of the tomatoes.
Ground mustard
Contributes pungent heat and a sharp, savory bite to the finished sauce.
Ginger
Adds warm, aromatic spice that gives the sauce depth.

The step that matters

Stir in the vinegar and mustard only when cold. Heat drives off the volatile compounds that give ground mustard its pungency and cooks away much of vinegar's sharp aroma. Adding both after cooling keeps the sauce tangy and sharp.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Radishfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, ginger, allspice, vinegar, mustard. 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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