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Tomato Relish

A preserved tomato relish made with tomatoes, onions, peppers, celery, mustard seed, salt, vinegar, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and mustard are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,169 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Tomato Relish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Scald the tomatoes.

  2. Peel the tomatoes.

  3. Finely chop the tomatoes.

  4. Chop the onions and sweet red peppers.

  5. Mix the chopped ingredients.

  6. Drain in a colander overnight.

  7. Add the finely chopped celery, white mustard seed, and coarse sea salt.

Make the vinegar mixture

  1. Combine the vinegar and granulated sugar in a pot.

  2. Scald the mixture.

  3. Let it cool.

Combine

  1. Mix the cooled vinegar mixture with the other ingredients.

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. Celery + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Tomato + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

  5. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes
Form the bulk of the relish and supply its moisture and body.
Onions
Add sharp, savory flavor and aroma that deepens as the relish sits.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that gives the relish its tang and helps preserve it.
Granulated sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar.
White mustard seed
Contributes a mild, pungent bite and a textural crunch.

The step that matters

Cool the vinegar mixture before combining it. Adding hot vinegar and sugar syrup to the chopped vegetables would partly cook them and soften their texture, so the syrup must cool before it is mixed in.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Lettucefits better
  3. Horseradishfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, pepper, celery, mustard, vinegar, 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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