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Tomato Soy

A pickled mixture of green tomatoes, onions, cucumber, and spices preserved in vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and ginger 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 Soy

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Slice the vegetables and place them in a colander.

  2. Sprinkle the salt over the vegetables and leave them overnight.

  3. After draining the brine, place the vegetables in a preserving pan.

Cook the pickle

  1. Add the spices and vinegar, then boil slowly until it becomes a pulp.

  2. Rub the mixture through a fine sieve.

Bottle and store

  1. Prepare small, dry, warm bottles and place a clove and a chilli in each.

  2. Fill the bottles with the mixture, cork, seal, and store in a dry place.

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 + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Tomato + cucumbertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,405 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Onion + cucumbertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,050 recipes

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

  5. Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 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

Green tomatoes
Provide the main bulk and body of the pickle as they break down into a pulp.
Onions
Add savoury depth and body as they soften during the long slow boil.
Cucumber
Adds moisture and a mild fresh flavour that blends into the pulp.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the vegetables overnight, firming them before cooking.
Malt vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that gives the pickle its tang and helps preserve it.

The step that matters

Boiling slowly until it becomes a pulp. Cooking gently lets the vegetables soften evenly and thicken without scorching on the base of the pan. Too fast a boil can burn the sugars and vegetables before the pulp forms, and the mixture needs to be fully soft before it is sieved.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, onion, cucumber, clove, ginger, malt, 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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