Name: Tomato Burta
Ingredients: cracked tomatoes; ground dry chillies or minced green chillies; ground green ginger; coarse sea salt; ½ teaspoon mustard oil; lime juice (optional)

Why it works: Ginger and lime match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,621 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Tomato Burta

Ingredients

Directions

Crack the tomatoes and mix them with ground dry chillies or minced green chillies.
Add ground green ginger, coarse sea salt, and mustard oil.
If desired, add a little lime juice to the mixture.

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.

Ginger + limetop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,621 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Mustard + limetop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together392 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Tomato + limetop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,878 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Ginger + mustardtop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,456 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Tomato + gingertop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,887 recipes

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