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Tomato Chutney

A preserved tomato condiment made with tomatoes, dates, raisins, salt, sugar, spices, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and garlic are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,076 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Tomato Chutney

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Parboil the tomatoes in the vinegar.

  2. Add the chopped dates, raisins, salt, sugar, and ground spices.

  3. Allow the mixture to stand for 10 to 12 hours.

  4. Boil for 30 minutes over low heat.

  5. When cool, bottle the chutney.

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. Tomato + garlictop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,076 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Garlic + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  3. Garlic + gingertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,402 recipes

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

  4. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Ginger + mustardtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,456 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 chutney and break down into a thick, spreadable base.
Dry dates
Add sweetness and body as they soften into the mixture.
Raisins
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy texture.
Coarse sea salt
Preserves the chutney and seasons it through the long standing.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the sharpness of the vinegar.
Vinegar
Acidifies the chutney, helping it keep and sharpening its flavour.

The step that matters

Boil for 30 minutes over low heat. Gentle, sustained cooking lets the tomatoes and dried fruit break down and thicken evenly. Too little cooking leaves the chutney thin and under-flavoured, while high heat risks scorching the sugars and sticking to the pan.

Swap the dates

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, raisin, sugar, vinegar, garlic, ginger, mustard):

  1. Limefits better
  2. Cherryfits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Datesthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, raisin, sugar, vinegar, garlic, ginger, mustard. 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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