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Tomato Chutney

A sweet and spicy tomato chutney made with apples, tomatoes, sugar, onions, raisins, garlic, ginger, salt, cayenne, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Tomato Chutney

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cook the tomatoes and rub them through a coarse sieve.

  2. Stone the raisins and chop all the ingredients.

Cook and serve

  1. Boil the mixture until it reaches a pulp.

  2. This chutney is ready for use immediately.

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. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Tomato + garlictop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,076 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  3. Garlic + gingertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,402 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  5. Garlic + peppertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,090 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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 and body of the pulp once cooked and sieved.
Sour apples
Add acidity and pectin, helping the chutney thicken as it cooks.
Raisins
Add chewiness and concentrated sweetness to the chutney.
Moist sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the sharpness of the vinegar and apples.
Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that brightens the flavour and helps keep the chutney stable.

The step that matters

Boil until it reaches a pulp. Long boiling drives off water and lets the fruit's pectin and fibres break down and thicken. Stopping too early leaves the chutney runny, while overcooking can scorch the sugar and dry it out too far.

Swap the raisin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (apple, tomato, sugar, onion, garlic, ginger, pepper):

  1. Mangofits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Plumfits better
  4. Raisinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, tomato, sugar, onion, garlic, ginger, 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.

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