Name: Tomato Soy
Ingredients: 8 pounds ripe tomatoes, fresh or canned; 1 quart vinegar; 3 pounds sugar; 1½ teaspoons cinnamon; 1½ teaspoons cloves; 1½ teaspoons English mustard; 1½ teaspoons cayenne pepper

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

Combine tomatoes, vinegar, and sugar in a large pot.
Add cinnamon, cloves, English mustard, and cayenne pepper.
Bring to a boil and simmer for 3 hours.

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.

Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,189 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).
Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together17,451 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
Cinnamon + mustardtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,581 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together17,923 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together14,067 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Ripe tomatoes: Provide the bulk of the sauce and its fruity, tomato flavor and body as they cook down.
Vinegar: Adds acidity that sharpens the flavor and helps preserve the sauce.
Sugar: Adds sweetness that balances the acidity and thickens the sauce as it reduces.
Cinnamon: Contributes warm, aromatic spice notes to the sauce.
Cloves: Contributes strong, warm aromatic notes to the sauce.

Swap the tomato

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

Horseradishfits better
Capsicumfits better
Shallotfits better
Tomatothe original

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