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Tomato Soy

A pickled tomato relish with onions, peppers, spices, mustard seed, celery seed, horseradish, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove 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 Soy

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Chop the green tomatoes, onions, and green peppers finely.

  2. Sprinkle the chopped mixture with 1 pint of coarse sea salt and let it stand overnight.

  3. Drain off the brine and cover the mixture with good vinegar.

  4. Cook slowly for 1 hour, then drain and pack into a jar.

Make the spiced vinegar and seal

  1. In a separate pot, combine 2 pounds of brown sugar, 2 tablespoons of ground cinnamon, 1 tablespoon each of ground allspice, ground cloves, and ground pepper, along with 1 cup of mustard seed, ½ cup of celery seed, and 1 pint of grated horseradish.

  2. Add enough vinegar to mix and bring to a boil.

  3. Pour the boiling mixture over the contents of the jar and cover tightly.

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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Green tomatoes
Provide the bulk of the relish and, once salted and cooked, its chunky texture.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the chopped vegetables, firming them and releasing brine.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and depth that balances the sharp vinegar.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the relish and gives it its tang.
Mustard seed
Contributes a sharp, pungent bite and a pleasant crunch.
Horseradish
Adds a hot, pungent heat that sharpens the overall flavour.

The step that matters

Draining the salted mixture before cooking. Salt draws out moisture, so the brine must be fully drained before the vinegar is added. Leftover brine would dilute the vinegar and make the relish watery and under-acidic, weakening its preservation.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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