Skip to main content
Salad

Tomato Mustard

A spicy tomato-based mustard made with tomatoes, onions, peppers, garlic, spices, vinegar, and mustard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Clove and allspice 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

Cook the vegetables

  1. Boil the tomatoes, onions, red peppers, and garlic for 1 hour.

  2. Add the salt, black pepper, ginger, allspice, mace, and cloves.

  3. Boil again for 1 hour.

Finish the mustard

  1. When cold, stir in the vinegar and mustard.

  2. If desired, add Cayenne for extra heat.

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. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Clove + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  4. Ginger + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,620 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes
Forms the bulk of the relish and gives it its body and sweet-tart base.
Vinegar
Adds acidity and sharpness that balances the sweetness of the cooked vegetables.
Mustard
Adds the sharp, pungent flavour that defines the condiment.
Onions
Add savoury depth and aroma as they soften during long boiling.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool before adding the vinegar and mustard. Mustard's pungent, sharp flavour compounds are volatile and fade with prolonged heat. Stirring it in once the mixture is cold helps preserve its bite, and cooling also keeps the vinegar's sharpness from being cooked off too.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, onion, pepper, clove, garlic, ginger, allspice. 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.

More tomato mustard recipes

Sauce 24 See all 49 →

You might also like

Tomato SaladTomato Salad179 recipesChicken SaladChicken Salad623 recipesSalad DressingSalad Dressing491 recipesCold SlawCold Slaw160 recipes