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Sauce

Tomato Butter

A preserved tomato condiment made with tomatoes, vinegar, spices, and brown sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Tomato Butter

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Let the peeled tomatoes stand in vinegar overnight.

  2. In the morning, drain the tomatoes.

Cook

  1. In a pot, scald together the vinegar, ground cloves, cinnamon, cayenne pepper, mace, mustard seed, and brown sugar.

  2. Add the tomatoes and boil slowly for 4 hours.

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 + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Cinnamon + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,581 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  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 bulk of the butter and release moisture that cooks down into a thick spread.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and helps thicken the butter as the liquid reduces.
Sharp vinegar
Adds acidity that balances the sweetness and helps preserve the tomatoes.
Mustard seed
Adds a sharp, pungent flavor that deepens during long simmering.

The step that matters

Boil slowly for 4 hours. A slow, long simmer lets excess water evaporate and the sugars concentrate, giving a thick, spreadable butter. Too fast a boil can scorch the sugars on the bottom of the pot and burn the flavor.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, vinegar, clove, cinnamon, pepper, mustard, sugar. 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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