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Mrs. Mary Brough's Tomato Relish

A tomato relish made with tomatoes, onions, horseradish, spices, sugar, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Mrs. Mary Brough's Tomato Relish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Sprinkle salt on sliced tomatoes and let them sit overnight.

  2. Pour off the liquid the next morning.

Make the relish

  1. Add chopped onions, grated horseradish, allspice, cloves, nutmeg, sugar, and enough vinegar to cover the mixture.

  2. Boil the mixture for a short time.

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. Allspice + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,331 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Horseradish + allspicetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together654 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Onion + horseradishtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,784 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes
Form the main bulk and body of the relish once softened and cooked.
Onions
Add savoury depth and aroma, and soften into the relish as it cooks.
Horseradish
Adds sharp pungency that gives the relish its characteristic bite.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that gives sharpness and helps preserve the relish.
Allspice and cloves
Contribute warm, spiced aroma that rounds out the flavour.

The step that matters

Pour off the liquid after salting. Salt draws water out of the tomatoes overnight. Pouring off that liquid keeps the relish thick instead of watery once it is cooked.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, horseradish, allspice, clove, nutmeg, sugar, vinegar):

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Beetrootfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, horseradish, allspice, clove, nutmeg, sugar, 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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