Name: Tomata Sauce, for Hot or Cold Meats
Ingredients: ripe tomatos; capsicum vinegar; cloves of garlic; powdered ginger; coarse sea salt; white wine vinegar; Cayenne pepper

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 ↓

Tomata Sauce, for Hot or Cold Meats

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Place ripe tomatos in an earthen jar.
Set the jar in a 300°F (150°C) oven until the tomatos are soft.
Remove the skins from the tomatos and mash the pulp.
Mix the pulp with capsicum vinegar and pounded garlic, adjusting quantities to the amount of tomatos.
Add powdered ginger and coarse sea salt to taste.
Optionally, substitute capsicum vinegar with white wine vinegar and add Cayenne pepper.
Store the mixture in small, wide-mouthed bottles, corked tightly, in a cool, 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.

Clove + gingertop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together6,038 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Tomato + capsicumtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together10,520 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Capsicum + peppertop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,571 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Tomato + garlictop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together14,076 recipes

Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).
Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together17,451 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

Swap the ginger

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, capsicum, vinegar, clove, garlic, white wine, pepper):

Basilfits better
Thymefits better
Cuminfits better
Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, capsicum, vinegar, clove, garlic, white wine, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.