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Tomato Mustard

A preserved tomato and pepper condiment flavored with spices, mustard, and vinegar.

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

Tomato Mustard

Ingredients

Directions

Make the tomato base

  1. Boil the tomatoes and red peppers for 1 hour.

  2. Strain the mixture through a colander.

Season and finish

  1. Add the coarse sea salt, ground black pepper, ground ginger, ground allspice, ground cloves, and chopped onions.

  2. Boil for another hour.

  3. Stir in the mustard and vinegar.

  4. Bottle 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.

  1. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Ginger + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Allspice + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,928 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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 sauce and provide its main body and flavour.
Red peppers
Add sweetness and body to the tomato base.
Mustard
Adds pungent heat and sharpness that defines the condiment's character.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and helps preserve it.
Onions
Add savoury depth and aromatic background to the long-cooked mixture.

The step that matters

Boil for another hour. Long simmering evaporates water and concentrates the tomato and pepper pulp into a thick, stable condiment. Stopping early leaves it thin and watery.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Radishfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, ginger, allspice, clove, onion, mustard, 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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