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Tomato Mustard

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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. Slice and boil the tomatoes and red peppers for 1 hour.

  2. Strain the mixture through a colander and boil again for 1 hour.

  3. Add black pepper, ginger, allspice, cloves, mace, and coarse sea salt.

Finish the mustard

  1. When cold, mix in mustard, curry powder, and vinegar.

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

Ripe tomatoes
Provide the main body and bulk of the sauce as they break down when boiled.
Red peppers
Add sweetness and vegetable body to the cooked base.
Mustard
Adds sharp, pungent flavour that carries through the cooked tomato base.
Curry powder
Contributes warm, aromatic spice flavour to the sauce.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the sauce its tang and helps preserve it.

The step that matters

Add the mustard, curry powder and vinegar only when the mixture is cold. Vinegar and the volatile compounds in mustard and curry powder can turn harsh or lose aroma when exposed to prolonged heat, so adding them after cooling keeps the flavour sharp and balanced.

Swap the mace

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

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

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