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Tomato Relish

A pickled tomato relish made with tomatoes, celery, mustard seed, horseradish, sugar, peppers, salt, onions, spices, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 Relish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Chop the tomatoes finely and press them overnight.

Make the relish

  1. Combine the pressed tomatoes with chopped celery, mustard seed, horseradish, sugar, peppers, coarse sea salt, chopped onions, and mixed spices in a large bowl.

  2. Add vinegar last and mix well.

Store

  1. Store in a jar; it will keep without sealing.

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. Celery + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Tomato + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Mustard + oniontop 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

Tomatoes
Form the bulk of the relish and supply its fresh, juicy body.
Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that brightens the flavour and helps preserve the relish.
Sugar
Balances the acidity and sharpness with sweetness.
Onions
Add pungent savoury flavour and aromatic bite.
Mustard seed
Contributes a sharp, pungent heat and crunchy texture.

Swap the tomato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against celery, mustard, horseradish, sugar, pepper, onion, 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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