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Tomato Soy

A preserved tomato and vegetable relish made with tomatoes, onions, peppers, mustard seed, sugar, cabbage, salt, vinegar, and horseradish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and horseradish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,832 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Tomato Soy

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Chop the green tomatoes and onions finely.

  2. Combine the chopped tomatoes and onions with 1 cup of coarse sea salt in a large bowl; let stand for 24 hours.

  3. Drain the mixture and add the chopped green peppers, mustard seed, sugar, and spices to taste.

Cook and bottle

  1. Moisten everything with vinegar and cook until tender.

  2. Before bottling, add the chopped cabbages and 1 cup of chopped horseradish.

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. Mustard + horseradishtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Cabbage + horseradishtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together481 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Mustard + cabbagetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,645 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + cabbagetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,081 recipes

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

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

Green tomatoes
Form the bulk of the relish and give it its tart, fresh-vegetable base.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the tomatoes and onions, firming them and concentrating flavor before cooking.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar and green tomatoes with sweetness.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that gives the relish its tang and preserving character.
Mustard seed
Adds a sharp, pungent flavor that deepens as the relish cooks.
Horseradish
Adds a hot, pungent bite that stands out in the finished relish.

The step that matters

Salting and draining the tomatoes and onions. Salt pulls water out of the vegetables through osmosis. Skipping the full 24 hours or failing to drain well leaves excess liquid, which dilutes the relish and makes it watery after cooking.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, pepper, mustard, sugar, cabbage, vinegar, horseradish):

  1. Broccolifits better
  2. Radishfits better
  3. Beetrootfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, pepper, mustard, sugar, cabbage, vinegar, horseradish. 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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