Name: Tomatoes, Dressed
Ingredients: 2 dozen cherry tomatoes, peeled and sliced; ¾ cup brown sugar; ¾ cup vinegar; salt, to taste; black pepper, to taste; optional: mustard, sweet oil

Why it works: Vinegar and mustard are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,067 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Tomatoes, Dressed

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Peel and slice the cherry tomatoes.
In a bowl, combine the brown sugar, vinegar, salt, and black pepper.

Layer and serve

Layer the sliced tomatoes in a dish, sprinkling the sugar and vinegar mixture between layers.
Continue layering until all tomatoes are used.
Optionally, add mustard and sweet oil for extra flavor.

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.

Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together14,067 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together15,430 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Cherry tomato + peppertop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18 recipes

Shared aroma: butanol (wine).
Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,814 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together20,806 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

What each ingredient does

Cherry tomatoes: Provide the main body and juice that the sweet-sour dressing soaks into.
Brown sugar: Adds sweetness and helps draw moisture out of the tomatoes to form a dressing.
Vinegar: Adds acidity that balances the sugar and sharpens the flavor of the tomatoes.

Swap the mustard

The recipe marks mustard as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cherry tomato, sugar, vinegar, pepper):

Capsicumfits better
Lettucefits about as well
Mustardthe original
Cucumberfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against cherry tomato, sugar, vinegar, pepper. 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.