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Tomato Mustard

A preserved tomato and mustard condiment made by boiling tomatoes, adding spices, and bottling with oil.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Tomato Mustard

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Cut the tomatoes into small pieces.

  2. Boil the tomatoes until tender.

  3. Pass the tomatoes through a sieve to extract the pulp.

  4. Boil the pulp until nearly dry.

Season and bottle

  1. Add the Cayenne pepper, black pepper, cloves, mustard seed, and coarse sea salt.

  2. Boil the mixture for a few moments.

  3. Let the mixture cool.

  4. Bottle the mixture.

  5. If needed, add more salt before the final boil.

  6. Top each bottle with sweet oil.

  7. Cork the bottles tightly to exclude air.

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

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

  3. Clove + mustardtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,829 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  5. Tomato + mustardtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,482 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

Tomatoes
Provide the bulk of the pulp, which is reduced to a thick base.
Mustard seed
Adds pungent, sharp flavour that deepens as the mixture is cooked.
Cayenne pepper
Adds heat to the sauce.
Cloves
Adds warm, aromatic spice flavour.

The step that matters

Boil the pulp until nearly dry. Reducing the pulp concentrates its flavour and removes excess water, so the mustard keeps its body and is less likely to spoil in the bottle. Stopping too early leaves a thin, watery product.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Lettucefits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, clove, mustard. 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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