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Sauce

Tomato Mustard

A spicy tomato sauce made with tomatoes, peppers, spices, mustard, curry powder, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and clove 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 Mustard

Ingredients

Directions

Make the tomato base

  1. Slice the tomatoes and boil them with the red peppers for 1 hour.

  2. Strain the mixture through a colander and return it to the pot.

Season and finish

  1. Add black pepper, ginger, allspice, cloves, mace, and coarse sea salt.

  2. Boil for another hour.

  3. Once cooled, stir in mustard, curry powder, and vinegar.

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

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Pepper + clovetop 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

Ripe tomatoes
Form the bulk of the sauce and provide its main body and moisture.
Red peppers
Add sweetness and vegetable body as they cook down with the tomatoes.
Mustard
Adds sharp pungency that gives the condiment its characteristic bite.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens flavour and helps preserve the finished condiment.
Curry powder
Contributes warm spice aroma and depth of flavour.

The step that matters

Stir in the mustard, curry powder, and vinegar only after cooling. Vinegar and mustard flavour are volatile and can turn harsh or dull when boiled for long, so adding them once the mixture has cooled keeps their sharpness and aroma in the finished sauce.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Turmericfits better
  4. Macethe original

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