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Sauce

Tomato Mustard

A tomato-based sauce seasoned with pepper, ginger, cloves, mace, mustard, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,038 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Tomato Mustard

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

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

  2. Strain the mixture through a colander.

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

  4. Boil the mixture for another hour.

Finish

  1. Once cooled, stir in the mustard 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. Ginger + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 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

Ripe tomatoes
Provide the main body and liquid base of the sauce as they break down during boiling.
Onions
Add sweetness and savory depth as they soften and dissolve into the sauce.
Red peppers
Contribute sweetness and color while adding vegetable bulk to the sauce.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens flavor and helps preserve the finished sauce.
Mustard
Adds sharp, pungent flavor that stands out against the cooked vegetables.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Turmericfits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, pepper, onion, ginger, 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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