Skip to main content
Main

Tomato Mustard

A tomato-based mustard condiment made by boiling tomatoes and peppers, then seasoning with spices and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Allspice and clove 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

  1. Slice the tomatoes and boil them with the red peppers for 1 hour.

  2. Strain the mixture through a colander and boil again for 1 hour.

  3. Add black pepper, ginger, allspice, cloves, and coarse sea salt to the mixture.

  4. Once cooled, stir in mustard, curry powder, and vinegar.

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. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Ginger + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Ginger + allspicetop 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. Pepper + clovetop 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 once cooked down.
Red peppers
Add sweetness and vegetable flavour that blends into the cooked tomato base.
Mustard
Adds sharp, pungent heat that gives the condiment its characteristic bite.
Curry powder
Contributes warm, aromatic spice notes that deepen the overall flavour.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens flavour and helps preserve the finished condiment.

The step that matters

Stir in the mustard, curry powder and vinegar only after cooling. Boiling dulls the volatile heat of mustard and the aromatics of curry powder, and vinegar's sharpness fades with prolonged heat. Adding these once the base has cooled keeps their pungency and bright acidity in the finished condiment.

Swap the tomato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, ginger, allspice, clove, mustard, 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.

More tomato mustard recipes

Sauce 24 See all 49 →

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesCream of Tomato SoupCream of Tomato Soup107 recipesTomato BisqueTomato Bisque61 recipesCream Tomato SoupCream Tomato Soup28 recipes