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Tomato Mustard

A preserved tomato condiment thickened with mustard flour and spiced with cloves, allspice, pepper, ginger, cayenne, onions, and curry powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Tomato Mustard

Ingredients

Directions

Make the tomato base

  1. Boil the tomatoes and salt in a preserving kettle for 30 minutes.

  2. Strain the mixture through a colander and return it to the kettle.

Season and thicken

  1. Add the ground cloves, allspice, black pepper, ginger, cayenne pepper, onions, and curry powder.

  2. Let it boil down considerably, then strain through a sieve.

  3. Add flour of mustard until the desired thickness is reached and simmer briefly.

Bottle

  1. Bottle for use.

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 + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Allspice + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,620 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Allspice + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,928 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. 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

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes
Form the bulk of the sauce and provide its body and acidity as they cook down.
Flour of mustard
Thickens the sauce to the desired consistency and adds mustard flavour.
Onions
Add savoury depth and body to the sauce as they cook down.

The step that matters

Letting it boil down considerably. Reducing the strained mixture concentrates flavour and thickens the sauce by evaporating water. Stopping too early leaves it thin and watery, while over-reducing can make it overly sharp and dense.

Swap the tomato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against clove, allspice, pepper, ginger, onion, flour, 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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