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Love-apple or Tomato Sauce

A tomato sauce flavored with ginger, garlic, chilies, tamarind, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and tamarind work together. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and 325 recipes mention both. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Love-apple or Tomato Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tamarind

  1. Steep the tamarinds in 1 quart of vinegar for 12 hours.

  2. Strain through a sieve, discarding the stones.

Make the sauce

  1. Add the remaining 2 quarts of vinegar, ground condiments, and salt.

  2. Break the tomatoes into the mixture.

  3. Boil, stirring constantly until it thickens.

  4. Remove from heat.

  5. Let cool.

  6. Strain carefully.

  7. Bottle the liquid.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Ginger + tamarindtop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together325 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  2. Tomato + garlictop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together14,076 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  3. Ginger + garlictop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together6,402 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Tomato + tamarindtop 7% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together137 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Garlic + tamarindtop 8% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together395 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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

What each ingredient does

Tamarinds
Provide sour acidity and fruity tartness that balances the sauce.
Vinegar
Adds acidity and helps preserve the sauce while extracting tamarind flavor.
Tomatoes
Contribute body, moisture and mellow sweetness as the sauce thickens.
Garlic
Adds pungent aroma and savory depth to the sauce.
Green ginger
Adds warm, sharp aroma and a peppery bite.

The step that matters

Boil, stirring constantly until it thickens. Thick, sugar-free sauces can scorch on the bottom of the pan if left unattended. Constant stirring spreads heat evenly and lets moisture evaporate gradually, so the sauce thickens without burning.

Flavor stand-ins for the ginger

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, garlic, tamarind, vinegar):

  1. Cuminbetter flavor fit
  2. Corianderbetter flavor fit
  3. Basilbetter flavor fit
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, garlic, tamarind, vinegar. 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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